17a 
POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
Guinea and Cape York^ " is a most fitting instrument for 
stripping off the leaves near the summits of the Seaforthia 
elegans and other palms, to enable it to arrive at the central 
tender shoot"^/' That naturalist observed the stomachs of 
the specimen he shot to be filled with triturated fragments 
of palm-cabbage and a few small pieces of quartz, which, 
like most Gallinaceay this fine crested negro-parrot takes 
seemingly to promote digestion. 
Illiger, Dr. Kaup, Bonaparte, and some other naturalists 
place the Parrot family at the head of the class. Dr. Kaupt 
makes the following remarks : — ^^If we look in the class of 
birds for an order in which the largest brain, the most per- 
fect eye, and the greatest sagacity of bird is to be found, 
and which have most analogies to man, and to the Primates, 
we shall find no other family than that of the 'Psittacidce, 
. . . The Psittacidce show a fine oval skull, the eye-socket 
almost closed ; fine and moderately large eyes, of which 
they can open and contract the pupil at will ; the nostrils 
bored into the nasal bone ; cere, the upper mandible large, 
curved from the broad front, on the sides emarginated, over- 
hanging the short lower mandible, which is turned upwards 
* Mr. Gould, * Birds of Australia/ supplementary part. 
f Jardine, * Contributious to Ornithology' for 1849, pp. 99, 12. 
