102 
CAROLINA ARARA. 
author,* scarcely less graphic or original in his de- 
scriptive powers, that of late years these birds have 
rapidly diminished in number, and that they are 
now almost banished from districts where formerly 
they used to abound. “ At that period,” (speak- 
ing of twenty- five years ago), “ they could be 
procured as far up the tributary waters of the Ohio 
as the great Kenhawa, the Scioto, the heads of the 
Miami, the mouth of the Manimee at its junction 
with Lake Erie, on the Illinois river, and sometimes 
as far north-east as Lake Ontario, and along the 
eastern districts as far as the boundary line between 
Virginia and Maryland. At the present day, few 
are to be found higher than Cincinnati, nor is it un- 
til you reach the mouth of the Ohio that parakeets 
are met with in considerable numbers. I should 
think that along the Mississippi there is not now 
half the number that existed fifteen years ago.” A 
rapidly increasing population, attended by an ex- 
tended cultivation, and the consequent destruction 
of many of those ancient and decayed trees which 
constituted the dormitories and breeding sites of the 
species, as well as the war constantly waged against 
them by the husbandman, as the depredators of the 
orchard and corn-stacks, are probably the chief causes 
of their rapid diminution in those parts which they 
formerly enlivened with their gay and varied plu- 
mage. We learn from both authors, that, when en- 
gaged in feeding, they are easily approached, and 
* J. J. Audubon. 
