OBANGE-BELLIED PABHAKEET. 
106 
The breeding season extends from September to January in their 
native country, or from Spring to Midsummer, corresponding to our 
March and July. 
These birds are not often caged by the colonists, and the few 
specimens that arc, now and then, to be met with in this country 
have been brought over privately by sailors or colonists returning 
“home”, as the latter are wont, fondly, to designate the mother 
country, which, perhaps, they have never even seen, having been born 
and brought up upon the Island — the Island, as Tasmania is familiarly 
designated by the residents on the Australian mainland. 
The Orange-bellied Parrakeet should, in captivity, be fed and treated 
exactly as we have recommended in the case of the Turquoisine, than 
which it will be found not less hardy and desirable. 
As a rule, all the birds that are indigenous to Tasmania are well 
suited to cage life, and may be looked upon as capable of being accli- 
matised, at least in our southern counties, if not in the far north of 
England, or in Scotland, for the Tasmania climate bears a great 
resemblance to that of Devon and Cornwall, and all our fruits and 
flowers thrive to perfection there, where the subtropical productions 
of the mainland are out of place. 
The farmers of course are not very fond of the Orange-bellied one 
and its congeners, for these birds find it more convenient to dine off 
the well-tilled fields, or to pick up the newly-sown corn to foraging 
for native grass- seeds in the bush; but, on the other hand, they destroy 
a good many noxious grubs, for, especially during the breeding season, 
they are partially insectivorous in their habits, although in captivity 
they will thrive perfectly well without any insect food. They are fond 
of thistle-seeds too, and thistles, since the day when a luckless Scotch- 
man introduced his national emblem, have been a plague to the Aus- 
tralian farmers and settlers generally; but their good deeds are forgotten, 
or overlooked, and their partiality for oats and corn alone remembered; 
so that these beautiful birds are ruthlessly destroyed, wherever found, 
and, in time, the race will become extinct, unless perpetuated in cap- 
tivity. 
Let amateurs then who are possessed of aviaries speak to the dealers 
from whom they get their birds, and ask for Orange-bellied Parrots 
from Tasmania, and the demand will promptly create a supply, not 
only of these, but of other beautiful denizens of the Tasmanian woods, 
of which the Ground Parrot, and the Gang-Gang Cockatoo {Psittacus 
galeatus) , are, as we have ali’eady said, two of the most desirable: 
the latter bird especially has been known to naturalists ever since 
Cook and Dr. Banks explored the coasts of Australia and the adjacent 
