90 CAROLINA PARROT. 



tain criteria by which to judge of their usual extent of range ; 

 those aerial voyagers, as well as others who navigate the deep, 

 being subject to be cast away, by the violence of the elements, on 

 distant shores and unknown countries. 



From these circumstances of the northern residence of this 

 species, we might be justified in concluding it to be a very hardy 

 bird, more capable of sustaining cold than nine-tenths of its tribe; 

 and so I believe it is ; having myself seen them, in the month of 

 February, along the banks of the Ohio, in a snow storm, flying 

 about like pigeons, and in full cry. 



The preference, however, which this bird gives to the western 

 countries lying in the same parallel of latitude with those eastward 

 of the Alleghany mountains, which it rarely or never visits, is wor- 

 thy of remark; and has been adduced, by different writers, as a 

 proof of the superior mildness of climate in the former to that of 

 the latter. But there are other reasons for this partiality equally 

 powerful, tho hitherto overlooked; namely, certain peculiar fea- 

 tures of country to which these birds are particularly and strongly 

 attached; these are, low rich alluvial bottoms, along the borders 

 of creeks, covered with a gigantic growth of sycamore trees or but- 

 ton wood — deep and almost impenetrable swamps, where the vast 

 and towering cypress lift their still more majestic heads; and those 

 singular salines, or as they are usually called licks, so generally in- 

 terspersed over that country, and which are regularly and eagerly 

 visited by the Parakeets. A still greater inducement is the supe- 

 rior abundance of their favorite fruits. That food which the Para- 

 keet prefers to all others, is the seeds of the cockle burr, a plant 

 rarely found in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, or New York; but 

 which unfortunately grows in too great abundance along the shores 

 of the Ohio and Mississippi, so much so as to render the wool of 

 those sheep that pasture where it most abounds, scarcely worth 

 the cleaning, covering them with one solid mass of burrs, wrought 

 up and imbedded into the fleece, to the great annoyance of this va- 



