10 THE PAKROT THEBES. 
caged parrots in London. Nature, whispering to the parrot, 
tells it that cleanliness means health, and strength, and beauty ; 
and so the parrot adopts the hint, and never loses a chance to 
lave its buoyant carcass in the cool sparkling water. Travellers 
tell us that many of the tribes will bathe as often as six or 
eight times a day, and that when bathed they come to the bank 
to shake themselves, like so many water-spaniels, and then, 
hopping up into the trees, sit all along the boughs and doze 
deliciously, while the blazing sun is busy drying and curling 
their fine feathers again. More will be said on this most im- 
portant subject by and by. 
Except during the important business of egg-hatching, the par- 
rots five in flocks. The nests which they construct exhibit none 
of that neatness which distinguishes those of European birds, but 
are merely holes in trees or rocks, padded with rotten wood and 
leaves. They breed several times in the course of the year, but 
not more than three or four eggs are hatched at one time. When 
the little parrot breaks its shell, it is about as ugly a creature 
as can well be conceived. It is as naked as a human baby, and 
its head is so large that its body appears but a little something 
attached to it. So large, indeed, and heavy is the head of the 
baby parrot, that for some hours it fairly anchors its owner to 
one spot, from which it has not the least power to move. The 
birds are of rather slow growth, and not thoroughly fledged till 
they reach the age of three months. They stay in the parent 
nest till their first coat has been shed, and the second attained, 
and then they set out to find mates, and otherwise enter into 
the serious business of life. 
Parrot catching and teaching is a trade regularly practised 
by the natives of the regions where the birds abound. Some 
are taken in the nest, and others are snared. It seems that the 
parrot is particularly fond of the seed of the cotton-tree, and 
that the natives strew it in its path. The seed of the cotton- 
tree possesses intoxicating qualities, and after eating it the 
deluded birds become so dreadfully tipsy as to become an easy 
prey to the parrot-catcher. 
It is asserted that the natives of Paraguay have a mode of 
trapping parrots peculiarly their own. To the trunk of a tree 
frequented by the birds, the snarer attaches a sort of platform, 
and on this he builds a little hutch of leaves, into which he can 
creep and lie concealed. With him he has a tame decoy, whose 
voice attracts the wild birds, which come to see what the row is 
about. The man in the hutch has a sort of fishing-rod with a 
