36 
SWIFT PARRAKEET. 
however short the distance that separates them: this is peculiarly the 
case in many of the island-groups of Polynesia, and those that are 
contiguous to the great island-continent of Australia. 
It having been lately denied that the Hobart Town Swift was a 
honey-eater, we may refer the reader to the late John Gould’s account 
of this Parrakeet in his magnificent work The Birds of Australia, 
where he specially mentions having shot them in the vicinity of Hobart, 
as the capital of Tasmania is now called, and seen clear honey, to the 
extent of a dessert spoonful drop from their beaks when he held them 
up by their feet: and we have been assured of the same fact by other 
trustworthy informants, who had spent many years in the colony. 
Since writing the above we have read an account of the Swift by 
M. Alfred Pousse, of Pontenay-le- Conte, who says (we translate): 
“This pretty Parrakeet is as hardy as possible, and deserves to be 
better known and more generally kept than it is. It bred with me 
in 1882, the first instance, I believe, of its nesting in confinement. 
I had had the birds in my possession since 1880. Incubation lasted 
twenty-one days, and in thirty more the young left the nest. This 
year again I have had a brood. The number of young to a nest (only 
one a year) varies from three to five. The sex of the young birds 
is at once apparent, as the red marks on the head of the males are 
already well developed.” 
