130 ASH-COLOURED OK GKEV PAROT. 
youth anil vigour it had been distinguished for its 
colloquial powers, and distinct enunciation, and was 
of so docile and obedient a disposition, as to fetch its 
master’s slippers when required, as well as to call the 
servants, &c. At the age of sixty, its memory began to 
fail, and, instead of acquiring any new phrase, it began 
to lose those it had before attained, and to intermix, 
in a discordant manner, the words of its former lan- 
guage. It moulted regularly every year till the age 
of sixty-five, when this process grew irregular, and 
the tail became yellow, after which, no farther change 
of plumage took place. It is subject to variety, as 
shewn in the figure of Edwards, where the ground 
colour is mixed with red. In size it measures about 
12 inches in length. The bill is black, strong, and 
much hooked, and the orbits, and space between them 
and the eyes, covered with a naked and white skin 
The whole of the plumage, with the exception of the 
tail, which is of a bright deep scarlet, is of an ash- 
grey colour, deepest upon the back, and the leathers 
finely relieved and margined with paler grey. The 
irides are of a pale yellowish-white, the feet and toes 
grey, tinged with flesh-red. 
The limited number of engravings not admitting 
of a figure illustrative of every group, we can only 
-emedy the deficiency by a description of such spe- 
cies as are remarkable, or typical of their respective 
genera. The Short and Even-tailed Parrots, as pre- 
viously observed, have been divided by Wagler into 
