182 L0R1CULUS JNDICUS. 



flowers afford it its favourite saccharine food. It is a most gluttonous little bird, constantly on the wing in 

 active search for its food, darting with a very swift flight through the woods, uttering its sibilant little scream, 

 its bright plumage flashing in the rays of the tropical sun. When it reaches a tree which attracts its attention 

 it instantly checks its headlong progress, and alighting on the top, actively climbs to the fruit which it has 

 espied, or should the tree prove barren, after giving out its call-note for a short time, darts off, perhaps in the 

 opposite direction from which it came. It is excessively fond of the " toddy " or juice which exists in the Kitool 

 or sugar-palm [Caryota wrens), and feeds on it to such an extent that it becomes stupified and falls an easy 

 captive to the natives, who cage it in large numbers for sale at Point dc Galle. 



While in a state of captivity they are fed on sugar-cane, of which they are very fond, but they do not 

 live for any length of time should the supply of cane come to an end. It feeds so gluttonously on the 

 beautiful fruit of the Jambu-tree that I have seen bird after bird shot out of one tree without their com- 

 panions taking the slightest notice of the gun or the death of so many of their little flock*. When held up 

 by the legs, after being shot, the juice of this fruit pours from their mouths and nostrils. The flowers of 

 the cocoanut-tree come in for a large share of its patronage, as do also those of other trees, on the "cups " 

 in- calyces of which it subsists, biting them off in a pendent attitude. Layard writes that " at Gillymally they 

 anc in such abundance that the flowering trees were literally alive with them; they clung to the bright 

 scarlet flowers head downwards, or scrambled from branch to branch, while the forest echoed with their 

 bickerings. They bit off the leaves (which fell like scarlet snow upon the ground) to get at the calyx ; and when 

 this dainty morsel was devoured they flew off to the banana-trees, down the broad leaves of which they slid 

 and fastened upon the ripening clusters of fruit or the pendent heai't-shapcd flower." 



When roosting at night they sleep hanging by their feet from the perch. 



The figure in the Plate facing my article on Palteomis ca/t/iropa is that of an adult bird, and that on the 

 Plate of Xantholcema rubricapilla an immature or yearling individual. 



• I have observed the same of Trichoglossus pwsillus m Australia, which it is sometimes impossible to drive from a 

 laden with ripe cherries otherwise than by vigorously shaking the stems ! 



