ORANGE -BELLIED PABBAKEET. 105 



The breeding season extends from September to January in their 

 native country, or from Spring to Midsummer, corresponding to our 

 March and July. 



These birds are not often caged by the colonists, and the few 

 specimens that are, now and then, to be met with in this country 

 have been brought over privately by sailors or colonists returning 

 "home", as the latter are wont, fondly, to designate the mother 

 country, which, perhaps, they have never even seen, having been born 

 and brought up upon the Island — the Island, as Tasmania is familiarly 

 designated by the residents on the Australian mainland. 



The Orange-bellied Parrakeet should, in captivity, be fed and treated 

 exactly as we have recommended in the case of the Turquoisine, than 

 which it will be found not less hardy and desirable. 



As a rule, all the birds that are indigenous to Tasmania are well 

 suited to cage life, and may be looked upon as capable of being accli- 

 matised, at least in our southern counties, if not in the far north of 

 England, or in Scotland, for the Tasmania climate bears a great 

 resemblance to that of Devon and Cornwall, and all our fruits and 

 flowers thrive to perfection there, where the subtropical productions 

 of the mainland are out of place. 



The farmers of course are not very fond of the Orange-bellied one 

 and its congeners, for these birds find it more convenient to dine off 

 the well -tilled fields, or to pick up the newly-sown corn to foraging 

 for native grass-seeds in the bush; but, on the other hand, they destroy 

 a good many noxious grubs, for, especially during the breeding season, 

 they are partially insectivorous in their habits, although in captivity 

 they will thrive perfectly well without any insect food.* They are fond 

 of thistle-seeds too, and thistles, since the day when a luckless Scotch- 

 man introduced his national emblem, have been a plague to the Aus- 

 tralian farmers and settlers generally; but their good deeds are forgotten, 

 or overlooked, and their partiality for oats and corn alone remembered; 

 so that these beautiful birds are ruthlessly destroyed, wherever found 

 and, in time, the race will become extinct, unless perpetuated in cap- 

 tivity. 



Let amateurs then who are possessed of aviaries speak to the dealers 

 from whom they get their birds, and ask for Orange-bellied Parrots 

 from Tasmania, and the demand will promptly create a supply, not 

 only of these, but of other beautiful denizens of the Tasmanian woods, 

 of which the Ground Parrot, and the Gang-Gang Cockatoo (Psittacus 

 galeatus) , are, as we have already said, two of the most desirable: 

 the latter bird especially has been known to naturalists ever since 

 Cook and Dr. Banks explored the coasts of Australia and the adjacent 



