AEA. 563 



As an order the Parrots form a very compact and isolated group with no outlying 

 members leading to other orders. The Striges and Accipitres are considered by some 

 to be the most nearly allied birds, but the affinity cannot be close nor are these two 

 orders at all nearly related to one another. 



Fam. PSITTACID-aS. 



The Psittacidae, which, as we have already said, is the only one of the six families 

 which here concerns us, belongs to Count Salvadori's second division of the order, in 

 which the maxilla has towards the end of the palate two series of ridges more or less 

 transverse or oblique, producing a file-like surface, the tongue is simple without fringe, 

 the sternum complete with a well-defined keel, the orbital ring is mostly incomplete, 

 but, if complete, without a process bridging the temporal fossa. 



Subfam. CONURIN^. 

 ConuriruB, Salvadori, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xx. p. 145. 



Tail soft as contrasted with the spiny tail of the Nasiterninge. Furcula present 

 (except in Psittacula) ; the left carotid superficial ; orbital ring complete ; tail usually 

 long and always cuneate. 



AEA. 



Ara, Cuvier, Lecj. d'Anat. Comp. t. ii. (1799) ; Salvadori^ Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xx. p. 150. 

 Sittace, Wagler, Mon. Psitt. p. 499 (1830). 



After assigning the three great Blue Macaws to the genus Anodorhynchus, and 

 Sittace spiai, Wagl., to Cyanopsittacus, Count Salvadori leaves fifteen species of these 

 large Parrots in the genus Ara, its range extending over most of the tropical portion 

 of the Neotropical region, with the exception of nearly all the West-Indian islands, 

 Cuba alone possessing A. tricolor, a species now nearly, if not quite, extinct. Six 

 species are found in Central America and Mexico, three of which only just enter the 

 fauna, as far as the Line of the Panama Railway. Of the remaining three, A. macao is 

 the only species extending over nearly the whole country as far as Southern Mexico, 

 both forms of the great Green Macaws having a more restricted range : one, A. militaris, 

 being found chiefly in Western Mexico ; the other, A. ambigua, in Nicaragua, Costa 

 Eica, and Panama, and thence southwards into Western Ecuador. 



The genus Ara contains birds of very difierent sizes, ranging from A. ambigua, one 

 of the largest of the American Parrots, to A. hahni, a bird less than some members 

 of Coiiurus. 



In Ara, as in all the following genera, the tail is long and cuneate, but the " orbital 



71* 



