THE CAROLINA PARROT. 
309 
way. They are incapable of articulating words, however much care and 
attention may be bestowed upon their education ; and their screams are so 
disagreeable as to render them at best very indifferent companions. The 
woods are the habitation best fitted for them, and there the richness of -their 
plumage, their beautiful mode of flight, and even their screams, afford 
welcome intimation that our darkest forests and most sequestered swamps 
are not destitute of charms. 
They are fond of sand in a surprising degree, and on that account are 
frequently seen to alight in flocks along the gravelly banks about the creeks 
and rivers, or in the ravines of old fields in the plantations, when they 
scratch with bill and claws, flutter and roll themselves in the sand, and pick 
up and swallow a certain quantity of it. For the same purpose, they also 
enter the holes dug by our Kingfisher. They are fond of saline earth, for 
which they visit the different licks interspersed in our woods. 
Our Parakeets are very rapidly diminishing in number ; and in some 
districts, where twenty-five years ago they were plentiful, scarcely any are 
now to be seen At that period, they could be procured as far up the 
tributary waters of the Ohio as the Great Kenhawa, the Scioto, the heads of 
Miami, the mouth of the Manimee at its junction with Lake Erie, on the 
Illinois river, and sometimes as far north-east as Lake Ontario, and along 
the eastern districts as far as the boundary line between Virginia and 
Maryland. At the present day, very few are to be found higher than 
Cincinnati, nor is it until you reach the mouth of the Ohio that Parakeets 
are met with in considerable numbers. I should think that along the 
Mississippi there' is not now half the number that existed fifteen years ago. 
Their flesh is tolerable food, -when they are young, on which account 
many of them are shot. The skin of their body is usually much covered 
with the mealy substances detached from the roots of the feathers. The 
head especially is infested by numerous minute insects, all of which shift 
from the skin to the surface of the plumage, immediately after the bird’s 
death. Their nest, or the place in which they deposit their eggs, is simply 
the bottom of such cavities in trees as those to which they usually retire at 
night. Many females deposit their eggs together. I am of opinion that the 
number of eggs which each individual lays is two, although I have not been 
able absolutely to assure myself of this. They are nearly round, and of a 
light greenish-white. The young are at first covered with soft down, such 
as is seen on young Owls. During the first season, the whole plumage is 
green ; but towards autumn a frontlet of carmine appears. Two years, 
however, are passed before the male or female are in full plumage. The 
only material differences which the sexes present externally are, that the 
male is rather larger, with mo v e brilliant plumage. 
