PRETTY POLL. 87 



own wings and plumage. They choose their mates for 

 colour as they choose their foodstuffs. Hence all the 

 larger and more gregarious parrots, in which the need 

 for concealment is less, tend to diversify the fundamental 

 green of their coats with crimson, yellow, or blue, which 

 in some cases take possession of the entire body. The 

 largest kinds of all, like the great blue and yellow or 

 crimson macaws, are as gorgeous as Solomon in all 

 his glory : and they are also the species least afraid of 

 enemies ; for in Brazil you may often see them wending 

 their way homeward openly in pairs every evening, with 

 as little attempt at concealment as rooks in England. 

 In the Moluccas and New Guinea, says Mr. Wallace, 

 white cockatoos and gorgeous lories in crimson and blue 

 are the very commonest objects in the local fauna. 

 Even the New Zealand owl-parrot, however, still retains 

 many traces of his original greenness, mixed with the 

 dirty brown and dingy yellow of his acquired nocturnal 

 and burrowing nature. 



If fruit-eaters are fine, flower-haunters are magnificent. 

 And the brush-tongued lories, that search for nectar 

 among the bells of Malayan blossoms, are the brightest- 

 coloured of all the parrot tribes. Indeed, no group of 

 birds, according to Mr. Alfred Eussel Wallace (who 

 ought to know, if anybody does), exhibits within the 

 same limited number of types so extraordinary a diversity 

 and richness of colouring as the parrots. ' As a rule,' he 

 says, ' parrots may be termed green birds, the majority 

 of the species having this colour as the basis of their 

 plumage, relieved by caps, gorgets, bands and wing- 

 spots of other and brighter hues. Yet this general green 



