22 BOMBAY DUCKS 
soft stone. Now, I have very great respect for a parrot’s 
beak ; indeed, I positively refuse to handle a strange 
parrot without first protecting my hands with a pair of 
driving gloves. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to believe 
that a green parrot’s beak is capable of boring into 
stone. Even if the feat were possible, I do not think 
that “poor Polly” would attempt it, for the excavation 
would certainly give him beak-ache, which must be 
quite as painful as tooth-ache. 
The common green parrot is found all over India, 
except in the higher hills. Hence those who would 
escape the noisy cries of our green friends have but to 
shake the dust of the plains from off their feet and 
ascend to the abode of the gods, The birds, however, 
venture up to a height of about five thousand feet in 
Southern India. Above this they will not trust them- 
selves, for they are tropical birds, and love not a low 
temperature. 
Although green parrots are so widely scattered, they 
are by no means uniformly distributed through the 
peninsula. In Bombay, for example, they are almost as 
numerous as the crows. In Calcutta they are not 
plentiful, while in Madras one does not see a dozen in 
the course of the summer. They are more abundant, 
however, in what those who dwell in the Benighted 
Presidency speak of as ‘ the cold weather.” 
This uneven distribution of birds is a curious phe- 
nomenon, and many species exhibit it. So far as I 
know, no satisfactory explanation has been offered. It 
does not appear to be a question of food-supply or 
climate, for it often happens that a certain kind of bird 
