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THE GREAT BLACK PALM COCKATOO, MUrosloSSUS atCirimilS IN CAPTIVITY. 



Food. — Mr. McLennan took these nestlings when they were just feathered, and fed them on soft 

 food, such as boiled rice, later getting them on to boiled barley. With this they were being fed by 

 hand when I received them, but I shortly changed the diet of the one that lived to boiled wheat, filling 

 its crop by hand at each feeding. At this time I also attempted to induce it to eat mixed bird-seed 

 by always leaving some in the tin, and noticed it selected buckwheat from the rest. Each seed was 

 held in the manner usual to the parrots and cockatoos, but the seed-case was split open along its line 



The Great Black Palm Cockatoo stands very erect upon its perch. The use of its 

 peculiarly constructed mandibles is explained in the accompanying article. 



of cleavage exactly in halves. All nuts, hi'mpseed — the main article of diet at present — fruit-stones, 

 greenpea pods and the peas therein, are carefully opened along their line of fissure. Mr. McLennan 

 found the birds living on the kernels of a very hard nut, the botanical name of which I have been unable 

 to ascertain. These nuts are so hard that it takes a strong blow with a tomahawk to crack them, and 

 are about the size of a large filbert nut. If the bird is given a walnut, the line of union of the two halves 

 is first discovered and cleaned of any softer fibrous material. Then the chisel-edged lower mandible 

 is inserted carefully, and with great pressure, the halves are separated right along till they come apart. 

 This method is always employed in reaching the contents of seeds, and evidently explains the object 

 of the finelv-pointed upper mandible (see figure), and also the chisel edge of the lower mandible. 



All food is taken in very small particles and transferred by a backward action of the tongue to 

 the cavity before mentioned on the posterior part of the tongue. Here it remains until a sufficient 

 quantity has been collected to fill the cavity, when it is passed on to the crop. I have dealt with the 

 method of feeding in detail because of the singular manner in which the bird, with its huge Macaw-like 

 mandibles, takes its food, the meticulous care being utterly unlike that of any other bird, and in sharp 

 contrast to the usual method. 



