ORDER SCANSORES. 549 



put in action by more numerous muscles than are to be found 

 in other birds. Their colours vary. In general, those of the 

 base, or the end, are deeper than those of the middle ; and the 

 under mandible more obscure than the upper. 



The bill is surrounded at the base with a naked skin, or 

 cere, less apparent than that of the birds of prey, and variously 

 coloured. In this the nostrils are pierced, which are smooth, 

 orbicular, and pretty large. 



The tongue is thick, fleshy, soft, and extremdy mobile, in 

 the parrots proper, and the skin which covers it is often very 

 fine, and dry, and furnished with papillae. These papillae, 

 according to M. de Blainville, are longitudinally arranged, 

 on a sort of anterior disk, supported by a corneous half-ring, 

 which is at the lower part of the tongue, and they are covered 

 by a kind of deposit, or pigment, above which is the epider- 

 mis, which is very slender. In the parrots which Levaillant 

 has named Aras a tromjje (some of our cockatoos, &c.) the 

 tongue forms a small cylinder, is flesh-coloured and solid, 

 tolerably long, not flexible, and terminated by a small black 

 gland, rather corneous, hollowed in its centre. The true 

 tongue consists in this little corneous' gland, while the cylin- 

 drical part, which sustains it, is a dependency of the hyoid 

 apparatus, susceptible of being more or less extended from 

 the bill, at the will of the animal, by a mechanism analagous 

 to that which elongates the tongue of the woodpeckers. This 

 tongue is at once an organ of sense, and an instrument of 

 touch and prehension, for the purposes of deglutition. 



In some species of parrots belonging to New Holland and 

 the South Sea Islands, the tongue is terminated by a crown- 

 formed bundle of hairs, or rather cartilaginous filaments, 

 which M. de Blainville considers as papillae, in consequence 

 of the bulk of the nerves which communicate with them. 



The eyes of the parrots are moderately large, and situated 

 laterally. The upper and lower lids form a rounded orifice. 



