80 PRETTY POLL. 



which bring together the cutting edges with extraordinary 

 energy. The way the bird holds the fruit gingerly in one 

 claw, while he strips off the rind dexterously with his 

 under-hung lower mandible, and keeps a sharp look-out 

 meanwhile on either side with those sly and stealthy 

 eyes of his for a possible intruder, suggests to the observ- 

 ing mind the whole living drama of his native forest. 

 One sees in that vivid world the watchful monkey ever 

 ready to swoop down upon the tempting tail-feathers of 

 his hereditary foe : one sees the canny parrot ever pre- 

 pared for his rapid attack, and ever eager to make him 

 pay with five joints of his tale for his impertinent inter- 

 ference with an unoffending fellow-citizen of the arboreal 

 community. 



Still, there are parrots and parrots, of course. Not all 

 this vast family are in all things of like passions one with 

 another. The great black cockatoo, for example, the 

 largest of the tribe, lives almost entirely off the central 

 shoot or * cabbage ' of palm-trees : an expensive kind of 

 food, for when once the ' cabbage ' is eaten the tree 

 dies forthwith, so that each black cockatoo must have 

 killed in his time whole groves of cabbage-palms. 

 Others, again, feed off fruits and seeds ; and not a few 

 are entirely adapted for flower-haunting and honey- 

 sucking. 



As a group, the parrots are comparatively modern 

 birds. Indeed, they could have no place in the world 

 till the big tropical fruits and nuts were beginning to be 

 developed. And it is now pretty certain that fruits and 

 nuts are for the most part of very recent and special 

 evolution. To put it briefly, the monkeys and parrots 



