so closely resemble a human or simian hand, not indeed in outer form or appear- 

 ance, but in apposability of the thumbs and in perfection of grasping power. 

 The toes upon each foot are arranged in opposite pairs — two turning in front 

 and two backward, which gives all parrots their peculiar firmness in clinging on 

 a perch or on the branch of a tree with one foot only, while they extend the 

 other to grasp a fruit or to clutch at any object they desire to possess. This 

 peculiarity, it must be admitted, is not confined to the parrots, for they share the 

 division of the foot into two thumbs and two fingers with a large group of allied 

 birds, called, in the exact language of technical ornithology, the Scansorial 

 Picarians, and more generally known by their several names of cockatoos, toucans 

 and woodpeckers. All the members of this great group, of which the parrots 

 proper are only the most advanced and develoi)ed family, possess the same 

 arrangement of the digits into front-toes and back-toes, and in none is the power 

 of grasping an object all round so completely developed and so full of intellectual 

 consequences. 



All the Scansorial Picarians are essentially tree-haunters ; and the tree- 

 haunting and climbing habit seems specially favorable to the growth of intellect. 

 Monkeys, squirrels, opossums, wild cats, are all of them climbers, and all of 

 them, in the act of climbing, jumping and balancing themselves on boughs, gain 

 such an accurate idea of geometrical figures, distance, perspective and the true 

 nature of space-relations as could hardly be acquired in any other way. In a 

 few words, they thoroughly understand the tactual realities that answer to and 

 underlie each visible appearance. This is, in my opinion, one of the substrata 

 of all intelligence ; and the monkeys, possessing it n;ore profoundly than any 

 other animal, except man, have accordingly reached a very high place in the 

 competitive examination perpetually taking place under the name of Natural 

 Selection. 



So, too, among birds, the parrots and their allies climb trees and rocks with 

 exceptional ease and agility. Even in their own department they are the great 

 feathered acrobats. Anybody who watches a woodpecker, for example, grasping 

 the bark of a tree with its crooked and powerful toes, while it steadies itself 

 behind by digging its stiff tail-feathers into the crannies of the outer rind, will 

 readily understand how clear a notion the bird must gain into the practical action 

 of the laws of gravity. But the true parrots go a step further in the same direc- 

 tion than the woodpeckers or the toucans ; for in addition to prehensile feet, 

 they have also a highly-developed prehensile bill, and within it a tongue which 

 acts in reality as an organ of touch. They use their crooked beaks to help them 

 in climbing from branch to branch; and being thus provided alike with wings, 

 hands, fingers, bill and tongue, they are the most truly arboreal of all known 

 animals, and present in the fullest and highest degree all the peculiar features 

 of the tree-haunting existence. 



Nor is this all. Alone among birds or mammals, the parrots have the 

 curious peculiarity of being able to move the upper as well as the lower jaw. It 



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