SWIFT PABBAKEET. 
35 
much of the disappointment and failm’e that attended our early efforts 
in the pursuit of aviculture will he avoided, and success crown the 
attempt of even the tyro in the occupation, which is of such an en- 
grossing nature that, we firmly believe, once it has been fairly taken 
up, it will never be entirely abandoned while life and health endure. 
How we have digressed to be sure, and how far we have left our 
Swifts behind us! Well, they are such nice birds, and we were and 
are so anxious that amateurs should make a trial of breeding them 
in this changeable climate of ours, that the object of our digression 
will, we trust, obtain us pardon for its length. 
The Swift Parrakeet differs considerably from its congeners in the 
shape of its wings, the primaries of which are narrow, and more than 
twice the length of the secondaries, consequently its flight is not only 
very powerful, but widely undulating in character; in fact so rapid is 
the progress of one of these birds through the ah’, that none but a 
most experienced shot could hope to bring it down. 
The peculiar shape of the wings has caused more than one scientist 
to separate the Swift from the rest of the family, and constitute it a 
genus, of which it remains the only known species: but such minute 
distinctions are confusing and unnecessary, and have, very wisely, been 
discarded by many modern ornithologists, especially by Dr. Puss, who, 
recognising but one genus, distinguishes the various members of the 
Parrot family from one another, by specific names only; whether they 
be Cockatoos, Lories, Parrakeets or Parrots proper; their one generic 
appellation in the pages of his invaluable works is Psittacus: an 
arrangement that should at once commend itself to every thoughtful 
ornithologist, as there can then no longer be a doubt as to what family 
a bird with this prefix belongs. 
In bird nomenclature, as in every other subject of popular study, 
simplicity and uniformity should, as far as possible, be the order of 
the day, and Dr. Russ has taken a right step in this direction, for 
which the thanks of all students of ornithology are due to him; and 
as his works become better known, and, consequently, properly appre- 
ciated, the horrible jargon, compounded of sonorous but too frequently 
inappropriate Greek and Latin words, will fall into well-merited 
oblivion, and birds be classed, as plants are, in “natural orders” rather 
than in genera, founded on trivial, or even imaginary distinctions. 
The Swift is an example of the fact observed by many naturalists 
that while Parrots of the same species are found at great distances 
from each other when they are inhabitants of a continent, in islands 
each little sea-engirt morsel of land maintains one or more species 
peculiar to itself, and unknown even to other islets of the same group, 
