54 ALEXANDRINE PABBAKEET. 



agriculturists that massacred the Parrots the late Mr. 0. Buxton would 

 otherwise have successfully acclimatised at Northrepps Hall. 



Well, Mr. Wood, seemingly, was no prentice hand at tuition, which 

 may, no doubt does, account for his success in mastering the Alex- 

 andrine favourite of his pupil: we have made the same attempt, with 

 more than one Parrot, Parrakeet and Cockatoo, but always with the 

 same result — ignominious discomfiture. We are in no wise disheartened, 

 however, and mean to try again — and again if it should be necessary, 

 but as we have said, the acquisition of the habit can certainly be 

 prevented. 



All these birds are extremely fond of company, and cannot bear to 

 be left alone for an instant; hence they are more suitable for out-door 

 aviaries, or a conservatory where, swinging on a perch, or hung up 

 against a background of elms or lime-trees, or of palms and tree ferns, 

 as the case may be, they add materially to the attractiveness of the 

 scene, and their screaming is not as noticeable as when they are kept 

 in a room. 



They are very sensitive too, and take likings and dislikings at first 

 sight; nor can any subsequent conduct of the individual concerned 

 induce them to modify their first impressions. 



Some of them become friendly at once with all their lady visitors, 

 and object most vehemently to men and boys; while others again are 

 women-haters, and will allow a man to do anything with them: scratch 

 their head, take them out of their cage, feed them from between his 

 lips, and so on; and when they have once formed an attachment, no 

 matter how ill-placed it may be, nothing will induce them to transfer 

 it elsewhere, they are nothing if not constant; their motto, "Foi est 

 tout." 



Volumes might be, and actually have been, filled with anecdotes of 

 this favourite bird and its congeners, but we shall content ourselves 

 with one related by Mr. Gedney, in his entertaining and instructive little 

 work on Parrots and Parraheets. — "It was my miserable fate," writes 

 that gentleman, "to be left in ill-health at Singapore, suffering, in 

 fact, from that species of ' lead-poisoning ' which was very common 

 during the Indian mutiny, and although it was, perhaps, unreasonable 

 of me not to 'slip my cable ' when such a result was expected, still 

 I had a young Joque monkey and a Ring-necked Parrakeet, and their 

 presence did more towards my recovery than all the physic, lint and 

 lotion of old Bolus. Poor Jacko had a knotted rope suspended from 

 the rafter; with a few cross pieces of wood put through the strands, 

 making perches, upon which he dozed and plotted schemes of revenge 

 against Polly, or, it may be, meditated upon the chances of stealing 



