328 AVES— ORDER PSITTACIFORMES. 



Buch aa Clialcopsittacus, Eos, and others, scarcely anything is known, and we 

 have only been able to gather the following scanty notes from Professor 

 Mivart's "Monograph" to give ua some idea of the habits of the Loriidos. 

 Of Eos rubijinosa, from the Caroline Islands, Dr. Otto Finsch observes :— 

 " This Parrakeet makes itself known by its continued noise, uttered both on 

 the wing and when resting in the foliage of high trees. It is not at all a 

 shy bird, approaching fearlessly the neighbourhood of houses and plundering 

 the fruit trees, notwithstanding all the means taken to destroy them. They 

 keep mostly in pairs, or in small companies of from three to five ; and often, 

 when I had shot one of a flock, the remainder would come down to their 

 dying comrade and share the same fate." 



Of the Green-tailed Lory of the Solomon Islands {Lorius chlorocercus), an 

 account is given, by Mr. James Marler, of a pair of young birds :— 'Tora 

 long time we apprehended that they would starve rather than go to tlie 

 ground for their food ; so I hit on the device of hanging it to the wire 

 swinging loose in the cage. To this they instantly resorted, holding it steady 

 with one foot, and tearing it with their bills. They hang and feed in any 

 position, holding sometimes by one foot and twisting round in every direction. 

 Often in their play, or battles, they would simultaneously grasp claws and 

 struggle to upset each other." In the Pacific we find the genus Fimia con- 

 fined to the Navigator's Islands and the Friendly and Panning groups. Dr. 

 Streets gives an accou nt of the way in which Kuhl's Lory ( Vinia kuhli) is taken 

 on Washington Island : — " When the islander wishes to take the Lories alive, 

 he provides himself with two pieces of bamboo, each about a yard long. On 

 the end of one he perches a tame bird, and from the extremity of the other 

 suspends a short running noose made of cocoa-nut fibres. The decoy bird, 

 as it is carried about among the cocoa-nut trees, utters a harsh, rasping 

 sound, and the wild birds fly down from the trees and alight alongside it on 

 the bamboo-stick, when, by means of the other stick, they are skilfully 

 noosed. When caged aboard ship, they exhibited as pretty a picture of love 

 as one can imagine. They sat billing and smoothing each other's feathers 

 for hours, and aa night came on, two would get together, and sleep with their 

 heads turned towards each other. They lived in confinement but a very 

 short time, and bore it badly. At times, even while we stood watching their 

 lively antics, one would tumble off its perch and die, apparently in con- 

 vulsions." The most numerously represented genus of the Loriidce is 

 Trichoglossus, which is distributed over the greater part of the Australian 

 Region, and the Papuan sub-region also presents us with a group of small 

 pointed-tailed Lories, such as Sypocharmosyna and Oreopsittacus, some of 

 which are not much larger than a sparrow. 



Count Silvadori's next family, the Gijclopsittacidce, contains only two genera, 

 Neopisttacus and GydopsiUacus, from Papuasia and the Molucca Islands, as 

 well as Australia. The bill is deeper than in the other two families noticed 

 above, and the size of the birds is small. 



In this family the under mandible has a series of ridges producing a file-like 

 surface. They embrace at once the largest and the smallest of the Parrots, 



among the former being the Cockatoos, of which the Great 

 The Cockatoos.— Black Cockatoo (Microglossics atemmvs) is an immensely 

 Family Ca^atuidce. powerful bird, while the members of the genua Nadterw 



do not possess the bulk of a sparrow. The White 

 Cockatoos are generally seen in this country in a state of captivity, but they 

 form an interesting feature of wild Australian bird-life, aa may be seen from 



