94 



CAROLINA PARROT. 



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

 cockle burrs on which the Parakeets so eagerly feed, were delete- 

 rious to cats ; and thus their death was produced by eating the in- 

 testines of the bird. These matters might easily have been ascer- 

 tained on the spot, which, however, a combination of trifling circum- 

 stances prevented me from doing. I several times carried a dose 

 of the first description 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 experiment. 



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 ma- 

 terials ; 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 found the broken frag- 

 ments of upwards of twenty Parakeets' eggs which were of a green- 

 ish yellow color. The nests, tho 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 sea- 

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

 the gluey matter. From all these contradictory accounts nothing 

 certain can be deduced, except that they build in companies, 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 color of the plumage of 

 the head and neck, of both sexes, during the two former of these 

 months, convinces me, that the young birds do not receive their 

 full colors until the early part of the succeeding summer. 



While Parrots and Parakeets, from foreign countries, abound 

 in almost every street of our large cities, and become such great 



