amination perpetually taking place un- 

 der the name of Natural Selection. 



So, too, among birds, the parrots and 

 their allies climb trees and rocks with 

 exceptional ease and agility. Even in 

 their own department they are the great 

 feathered acrobats. Anybody who watches 

 a wood-pecker, for example, grasping the 

 bark of a tree with its crooked and pow- 

 erful toes, while it steadies itself behind 

 by digging its stiff tail-feathers into the 

 crannies of the outer rind, will readily 

 understand how clear a notion the bird 

 must gain into the practical action of the 

 laws of gravity. But the true parrots go 

 a step further in the same direction than 

 the wood-peckers or the toucans ; for in 

 addition to prehensile feet, they have also 

 a highly-developed prehensile bill, and 

 within it a tongue which acts in reality as 

 an organ of touch. They use their 

 crooked beaks to help them in climbing 

 from branch to branch ; and being thus 

 provided ahke with wings, hands, fingers, 

 bill and tongue, they are the most truly 

 arboreal of all known animals, and pre- 

 sent in the fullest and highest degree all 

 the peculiar features of the tree-haunting 

 existence. 



Nor is this all. Alone among birds or 

 mammals, the parrots have the curious 

 peculiarity of being able to move the up- 

 per as well as the lower jaw. It is this 

 strange mobility of both the mandibles 

 together, combined with the crafty effect 

 of the sideways glance from those artful 

 eyes, that gives the characteristic air of 

 intelligence and wisdom to the parrot's 

 face. We naturally expect so clever a 

 bird to speak. And when it turns upon 

 us suddenly with some well-known 

 maxim, we are not astonished at its re- 

 markable intelligence. 



Parrots are true vegetarians ; with a 

 single degraded exception, to which I 

 shall recur hereafter, they do not touch 

 animal food. They live chiefly upon a 

 diet of fruit and seeds, or upon the abun- 

 dant nectar of rich tropical flowers. And 

 it is mainly for the purpose of getting at 

 their chosen food that they have devel- 

 oped the large and powerful bills which 

 characterize the family. Most of us have 

 probably noticed that many tropical fruit- 

 eaters, like the hornbills and the toucans, 

 are remarkable for the size and strength of 



their beaks ; and the majority of thinking 

 people are well acquainted with the fact 

 that tropical fruits often have thick or 

 hard or bitter rinds, which must be torn 

 off before the monkeys or birds, for whose 

 use they are intended, can get at them 

 and eat them. 



As monkeys use their fingers in place 

 of knives and forks, so birds use their 

 sharp and powerful bills. No better nut- 

 crackers and fruit-parers could possibly 

 be found. The parrot, in particular, has 

 developed for the purpose his curved and 

 inflated beak — a wonderful weapon, keen 

 as a tailor's scissors, and moved by pow- 

 erful muscles on both sides of the face 

 which bring together the cutting edges 

 with extraordinary energy. The way the 

 bird holds a fruit gingerly in one claw, 

 while he strips off the rind dexterously 

 with his under-hung lower mandible, and 

 keeps a sharp look-out meanwhile for a 

 possible intruder, suggests; to the observ- 

 ing mind the whole living drama of his 

 native forest. One sees in that vivid 

 world the watchful monkey ever ready to 

 swoop down upon the tempting tail- 

 feathers of his hereditary foe ; one sees 

 the parrot ever prepared for his rapid at- 

 tack, and eager to make him pay with 

 five joints of his tail for his impertinent 

 interference with an unoffending fellow- 

 citizen of the arboreal community. 



Of course there are parrots and par- 

 rots. The great black cockatoo, for ex- 

 ample, the largest of the tribe, lives al- 

 most exclusively upon the central shoot 

 of palm-trees ; an expensive kind of food, 

 for when once this so-called "cabbage" 

 has been eaten the tree dies, so that each 

 black cockatoo must have killed in his 

 time whole groves of cabbage-palms. 

 Other parrots live on fruits and seeds ; 

 and quite a number are adapted for 

 flower-haunting and honey-sucking. 



As a group, the parrots must be com- 

 paratively modern birds. Indeed, they 

 could have no place in the world till the 

 big tropical fruits and nuts were begin- 

 ning to be developed. And it is now gen- 

 erally believed that fruits and nuts are 

 for the most part of recent and special 

 evolution. To put the facts briefly, the 

 monkeys and parrots developed the 

 fruits and nuts, while the fruits and nuts 

 returned the compliment by developing 



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