PRETTY POLL. 85 



The kea, pondering deeply on this abstruse problem, 

 solved it at once with an emphatic affirmative. And he 

 straightway proceeded to act upon his convictions, and 

 invent a really hideous mode of procedure. Perching on 

 the backs of the living sheep he has now learnt the exact 

 spot where the kidneys are to be found ; and he tears 

 open the flesh to get at these dainty morsels, which he 

 pulls out and devours, leaving the unhappy animal to 

 die in miserable agony. As many as two hundred 

 ewes have thus been killed in a night at a single 

 station. I need hardly add that the sheep-farmer 

 naturally resents this irregular proceeding, so opposed to 

 all ideals of good grazing, and that the days of the kea 

 are now numbered in New Zealand. But from the 

 purely psychological point of view the case is an interest- 

 ing one, as being the best recorded instance of the growth 

 of a new and complex instinct actually under the eyes of 

 human observers. 



One word as to the general colouring of the parrot 

 group as a whole. Tropical forestine birds have usually 

 a ground tone of green because that colour enables them 

 best to escape notice among the monotonous verdure of 

 equatorial woodland scenery. In the north, to be sure, 

 green is a very conspicuous colour; but that is only 

 because for half the year our trees are bare, and even 

 during the other half they lack that ' breadth of tropic 

 shade ' which characterises the forests of all hot 

 countries. Therefore, in temperate climates, the common 

 ground-tone of birds is brown, to harmonise with the 

 bare boughs and leafless twigs, the clods of earth and 

 dead turf or stubble. But in the evergreen tropics 



