HONEY^EATING PARROTS 85 



them in plumage, being dark dull brown when 

 young, and richly glossed with green and bronze 

 when adult. 



Besides the family of Humming-birds and the 

 various honey-sucking groups of Passerines above 

 alluded to, there are honey-sucking Parrots, and 

 in the case of these, too, the honey-sucking habit 

 has evidently originated more than once quite 

 independently. These birds have longer and more 

 protrusible tongues than other Parrots — though the 

 difference is not great — but they differ in detail. 



In the Lories, which are far the most numerous 

 and best-known of these Parrots, the tongue has 

 the papillse on its end much elongated, so as to 

 form a very short-fibred brush ; in the Nestors, 

 of which only the Kaka or Forest-Parrot of New 

 Zealand (Nestor meridionalis) and the sheep-worry- 

 ing Kea survive, the end of the tongue is plain, but 

 has under it a plate of horn not unlike the human 

 nail, of which the end is split into bristles ; while 

 in the little Bat-Parrots (Loriculus), which aire so 

 peculiar in their habit of sleeping upide-down, the 

 tongue is quite ordinary, although they are confirmed 

 honey-eaters. 



It seems curious to find honey-eaters among 

 such a group as the Parrots, with beaks so strongly 

 specialized for cracking and crunching ; and as a 

 matter of fact some at aU events of the syrup- 

 sipping forms will eat seed in confinement, crack- 

 ing it in quite the normal way, although too much 

 of such food is said to give them fits. 



