X 
INTRODUCTION. 
Parrot are to be taken into consideration. When refuse food and the 
droppings of the creature itself are allowed to accumulate on the floor of 
a bird’s cage, bad smells arise from fermentation, not to say putrefaction, 
and, it is scarcely necessary to insist on such a point, are apt to give rise 
to low fever, and other serious ailments: the perches, too, must be frequently 
scraped or washed, or the Parrot, whose legs are so short that the breast 
feathers rub on what the bird sits on, will soon present a bedraggled, 
poverty-stricken appearance, that will cause it to neglect the rest of its 
person, and finally to become an object of disgust to those who see it, 
instead of, as it otherwise would be, “a thing of beauty” and “a joy for 
ever.” 
Parrots are great dandies, and are fond of preening and arranging their 
beautiful dress, but let this once become seriously soiled, they will give up 
the care of their toilet in despair, and degenerate into hopeless slatterns 
and slovens. In order to enable them to maintain the natural beauty of 
their coat, these birds, in their wild state, bathe freely, and should always 
be provided with the means of “tubbing” when they please in captivity. 
Some of them will not wash themselves in a cage, but as soon as they 
are allowed to fly about a room, will pop into a pan of water, if one is 
placed where they can readily reach it, and give themselves a good washing, 
after which they will sit in the sun, and pass every feather through their 
beak, until they are as neat as a new pin, and as glossy as if they had 
just come out of the woods. 
Some birds however, in all probability individuals who have been brought 
up by hand from the nest, cannot be prevailed upon to wash themselves at 
all ; in which case it will be necessary to give them, not a good scrubbing, 
but a gentle shower-bath of luke-warm water from a garden syringe, every 
now and then : and after the first time or two they will cease to be afraid, 
and even like and look for their washing, which, we need scarcely observe, 
must only be done in warm weather. Or the cage may be placed out of 
doors during the continuance of a genial summer shower, which “Poll” 
will much appreciate, holding out his wings, and spreading out his tail to 
catch the falling drops; this we have seen our acclimatised Parrakeets doing, 
even in winter time, in the out-of-doors aviary where we keep them all the 
year round. 
Never put a Parrot in a round cage: nothing mars the beauty of its 
plumage so much, for in turning about it is obliged to press against the 
bars of the cage in whichever direction it moves, and so the feathers get 
