VARIETIES OF THE PARROT TRIBE. 
11 
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I 
string noose at the end, and this he casts round the necks of 
the sympathizing visitors to the treacherous decoy. A system 
of rewards and punishments is the plan adopted by the 
natives in educating the parrot ; if he is obstinate, they blow 
tobacco-smoke in his face, or immerse him in the coldest water. 
If he is obedient, he is rewarded with cocoa-milk and sugar. 
CHAPTER III. 
VARIETIES OF THE PARROT TRIBE. 
In referring to the various Parrots (by which familiar title be 
it understood the entire tribe — including maccaws, parrots, 
cockatoos, parrakeets, and lories — will be here designated, when 
spoken of, collectively), I shall beg to be absolved from the tedious 
business of giving each its stiff-starched, unpronounceable, Latin 
cognomen. Clever Mary Howitt’s excuse for adopting the 
course I propose shall be mine. She says, “ It may be very 
agreeable to read the descriptions of birds by naturalists, with 
all their long Latin names, as Haliceetus leucocephalus, Poly- 
! horus vulgaris, Pledophanis nivalis, and the like ; but give me 
a quiet nook to watch them in on a fine summer’s day, either in 
this country or any other. Then- free and frolicsome motions, 
their glancing colours, their voices more expressive of joy, of 
life, of spirit, of passion, than any Latin ; their habits and ways 
of living, all peculiar to themselves, — that is, indeed, a treat, 
and a lesson in natural history. I have seen the parrot in the 
Australian woods thus making the dusky gum-tree all alive ; 
and they gave me ideas of a divertisement that I never find in 
reading of them as Platycercus, the Trichoglossus, or Plyctolo- 
phus. In the one case, I seem to be looking into a museum of 
the stuffed defunct ; in the other, into the living world itself.” 
The form of parrots, as says Pechstein, is, generally speak- 
ing, somewhat clumsy and deficient in elegance ; their head and 
bill appearing too large for the rest of the body. In parrakeets 
this disproportion is, in great measure, counteracted by the length 
of the tail, and many of them exhibit an elegance and grace 
[ not surpassed by any other bird. The general formation of the 
| feet, two toes placed forward and two backward, seems to prove 
| that woods and forests are the natural habitat of the race. It 
