382 CAROLINA PARROT. 



the experiment, and that, whatever might be the cause, the 

 cat had actually died either on that or the succeeding day. A 

 French planter near Bayo Fourche pretended to account to 

 me for this effect by positively asserting, that the seeds of the 

 cockle burs on which the paroquets so eagerly feed, were 

 deleterious to cats ; and thus their death was produced by 

 eating the intestines of the bird. These matters might 

 easily have been ascertained on the spot, which, however, a 

 combination of trifling circumstances prevented me from 

 doing. I several times carried a dose of the first descrip- 

 tion in my pocket till it became insufferable, without 

 meeting with a suitable ■patient, on whom, like other pro- 

 fessional gentlemen, I might conveniently make a fair ex- 

 periment. 



I was equally unsuccessful in my endeavours to discover the 

 time of incubation or manner of building among these birds. 

 All agreed that they breed in hollow trees ; and several 

 affirmed to me that they had seen their nests. Some said 

 they carried in no materials ; others, that they did. Some 

 made the eggs white ; others, speckled. One man assured me 

 that he cut down a large beech tree, which was hollow, and in 

 which he (bund the broken fragments of upwards of twenty 

 paroquets' eggs, which were of a greenish yellow colour. The 

 nests, though destroyed in their texture by the falling of the 

 tree, appeared, he said, to be formed of small twigs glued to 

 each other, and to the side of the tree, in the manner of the 

 chimney swallow. He added, that if it were the proper season, 

 he could point out to me the weed from which' they procured 

 the gluey matter. From all these contradictory accounts no- 

 thing certain can be deduced, except that they build in com- 

 panies, in hollow trees. That they commence incubation late 

 in summer, or very early in spring, I think highly probable, 

 from the numerous dissections I made in the months of March, 

 April, May, and June ; and the great variety which I found 

 in the colour of the plumage of the head and neck of both 

 sexes, during the two former of these months, convinces me, 



