34o DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSEUM. 



This last was discovered and sent us from Pon- 

 dicherry, by M. Leschenault. 



The thirteenth and fourteenth cases contain 

 the beautiful and numerous family of parrots, 

 which is divided into cockatoos, lorys, aras, 

 parrots, and parrakeets. The cockatoos have a 

 tuft on the head which they raise and lower at 

 will ; the greater number of them have a white 

 plumage, that of the lorys is red. The aras are 

 sought after on account of the brilliant and 

 various colours which adorn them(i). Green 

 is the prevailing colour of the parrakeets and 

 parrots, properly so called. There are however 

 some exceptions; the common grey or African 

 parrot, called jaco (psittacus erithacus), which 

 can articulate with so much facility, is of an ash 

 grey all over the body and wings, and the tail is 

 of a fine red. That of the Moluccas, which Buffon 

 calls parrakeet, with the spotted blue face, is 

 of varied colours (2). All climb the trees with 

 the assistance of their beak (3). The species most 



(1) Oae of them is entirely black, the ana a trompe of Levaillant. 

 M. Geofifroy Saint- Hilaire calls it the microghssa, on account of the 

 smallness of its tongue; the functions of which are supplied by the 

 larynx, which it projects beyond its beak. 



(2) Those colours are said to be accidental, and produced by an 

 operation called tapircr; some feathers are taken away, and the naked 

 skin of the bird is rubbed with the blood of a frog called rana tincloria ; 

 the new feathers which shoot out after this operation change theircolour. 



(5) The perruclw in gam be of Levaillant, which we received from New 



