is this strange mobility of both the mandibles together, combined with the crafty 

 effect of the sideways glance from those artful eyes, that gives the characteristic 

 air of intelligence and wisdom to the parrot's face. We naturally expect so 

 clever a bird to speak. And when it turns upon us suddenly with some well- 

 known maxim, we are not astonished at its remarkable intelligence. 



Parrots are true vegetarians ; with a single degraded exception, to which I 

 shall recur hereafter, they do not touch animal food. They live chiefly upon a 

 diet of fruit and seeds, or upon the abundant nectar of rich tropical flowers. 

 And it is mainly for the purpose of getting at their chosen food that they have 

 developed the large and powerful bills which characterize the family. Most of 

 us have probably noticed that many tropical fruit-eaters, like the hornbills and 

 the toucans, are remarkable for the size and strength of their beaks ; and the 

 majority of thinking people are well acquainted with the fact that tropical fruits 

 often have thick or hard or bitter rinds, which must be torn off before the monkeys 

 or birds, for whose use they are intended, can get at them and eat them. 



As monkeys use their fingers in place of knives and forks, so birds use their 

 sharp and powerful bills. No better nut-crackers and fruit-parers could possibly 

 be found. The parrot, in particular, has developed for the purpose his curved 

 and inflated beak — a wonderful weapon, keen as a tailor's scissors, and moved 

 by powerful muscles on both sides of the face which bring together the cutting 

 edges with extraordinary energy. The way the bird holds a fruit gingerly in 

 one claw, while he strips off the rind dexterously with his under-hung lower 

 mandible, and keeps a sharp look-out meanwhile for a possible intruder, suggests 

 to the observing mind the whole living drama of his native forest. One sees in 

 that vivid world the watchful monkey ever ready to swoop down upon the tempt- 

 ing tail-feathers of his hereditary foe ; one sees the parrot ever prepared for his 

 rapid attack, and eager to make him pay with five joints of his tail for his im- 

 pertinent interference with an unoffending fellow-citizen of the arboreal com- 

 munity. 



Of course there are parrots and parrots. The great black cockatoo, for 

 example, the largest of the tribe, lives almost exclusively upon the central shoot 

 of palm trees ; an expensive kind of food, for when once this so-called ''cabbage" 

 has been eaten, the tree dies, so that each Wack cockatoo must have killed in his 

 time whole groves of cabbage-palms. Other parrots live on fruits and seeds ; 

 and quite a number are adapted for flower-haunting and honey-sucking. 



As a group, the parrots must be comparatively modern birds. Indeed, they 

 could have no place in the world till the big tropical fruits and nuts were begin- 

 ning to be developed. And it is now generally believed that fruits and nuts are 

 for the most part of recent and special evolution. To put the facts briefly, the 

 monkeys and parrots developed the fruits and nuts, while the fruits and nuts 

 returned the compliment by developing conversely the monkeys and parrots. In 

 other words, both types grew up side by side in mutual dependence, and evolved 

 themselves pari passu for one another's benefit. Without the fruits there could 



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