44S ILLINOIS PARRAKEET. 



aad I shall extract what he has said on the subject. 

 Indeed, after the numerous species of Parrots 

 which have been discovered in New Holland, we 

 can no longer doubt the impropriety of the limits 

 assigned to this genus by Buffon. 



" This illustrious author, says Mr. Pennant, hav- 

 ing resolved that no Parrots should pass beyond 

 the tropic of Capricorn, despises the authority of 

 the Dutch navigator Spilbergen, who was eye- 

 witness to the woods of Terra del Fuego, the very 

 southern boundary of the Straits of Magellan, in 

 lat. 44, being full of a species of these birds. He 

 might have cited the evidence of Captain Hood, 

 who saw a small Parrot at Cape Famine ; and he 

 might have quoted Commodore Byron, who says 

 that, notwithstanding the coldness of the climate, 

 he observed Parrots innumerable in the woods of 

 the same harbour. Mr. Edwards, one of the sur- 

 geons, now living at Caernarvon, informed me that 

 he saw them in abundance, and that they were of 

 a deep green ; probably the very species engraven 

 in the Planches Enluminees, No. 85. The Count 

 treats with the same contempt the authority of the 

 observant and veracious Captain Cook, who, in de- 

 fiance of the Count's canon, had the hardiness to 

 trust to the evidence of his own senses, and assert 

 that he saw Parrots in the isle of New Zealand ; 

 and even to suffer Captain Furneaux to blab out 

 that Parrakeets were inhabitants of Van Diemen's 

 Landj the very extremity of New Holland ; both 

 of them countries interdicted by the illustrious 

 naturalist to the whole Parrot race. How greatly 



