Kim PABBOT, OB PABBAKKKT. 
95 
for curing complaints thatj with a little care and attention, would never 
have supervened to worry the owner and to Mil the bird. 
Coughs are avoidable, so are fits, so is egg-binding, so are colds, 
inflammations, and congestions, so are constipation and diarrhsea, and 
so in point of fact are all the ills that captive birds are, not heirs, 
but liable to, when kept by persons who think only of themselves and 
neglect their prisoners, or who have their heads crammed full of useless 
and too often mischievous old-fashioned notions as to feeding, coddling, 
and depriving the poor creatures of water. 
Depend upon it, diseases are more readily prevented than cured. 
Keep your birds out of draughts, feed them as you find recommended 
in these pages, give them room to exercise their wings and feet in, 
company and occupation, and you will find that there will be no diseases 
to cure, and that old age, for which there is no preventive, will at 
last gently and insensibly usher them into — we were about to wiite — a 
better land, but — ^after all who can tell whether the Great and Good 
Creator may not, in some portion of His boundless universe, have re- 
served a place where the unhappy members of what men are pleased 
to call the brute” creation, may re-live their lives, and find compen- 
sation for the ills that, by no fault of theirs, they were made to suffer 
here? Who indeed! but we must forbear, the subject is not one for 
discussion in these pages. 
The King Parrot is not a particuWly bright or intelligent bird, still 
an odd male, now and again, will become exceedingly tame, and learn 
to repeat a few words, or even a short sentence, but to enable him 
to do even this, he must be taken in hand when very young, and 
much patience and perseverance be brought to bear upon the task. 
The female is a very silent bird, and we never knew one that learned 
to repeat even a single word: we are far, however, from saying that 
such a phenomenon as a talking Queen Parrot is impossible, but simply 
that we have neither seen nor heard of one. 
It is unfortunately true, as an author who is well known as inimical 
to ‘"dealers” asserts, that some importers of King Parrots “stove” up 
their birds to make them moult their nest feathers prematurely, and 
assume the adult garb, before the natural period for their doing so 
has come round, for we have seen the cruel practice in operation, and 
remonstrated, but were met by the assurance that the birds liked it, 
and that it agreed with them. 
To which we replied that the poor things did not look as if they 
enjoyed being half-cooked alive in the dark, and that we believed a 
bird so treated was irretrievably weakened in constitution, and would 
never live out half its days : but a King “in colour^’ being worth more 
