CAROLINA PARROT. 
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of the Ohio and Mississippi ; so much so as to render the 
wool of those sheep that pasture where it most abounds, 
scarcely worth the cleaning, covering them with one solid 
mass of burs, wrought up and imbedded into the fleece, to 
the great annoyance of this valuable animal; The seeds of 
the cypress tree and hackberry, as well as beech nuts, are 
also great favourites with these birds ; the two former of which 
are not commonly found in Pennsylvania, and the latter by 
no means so general or so productive. Here, then, are 
several powerful reasons, more dependent on soil than climate, 
for the preference given by these birds to the luxuriant regions 
of the west. Pennsylvania, indeed, and also Maryland, 
abound with excellent apple orchards, on the ripe fruit of 
which the Paroquets occasionally feed. But I have my 
doubts whether their depredations in the orchard be not as 
much the result of wanton play and mischief, as regard for 
the seeds of the fruit, which they are supposed to be in 
pursuit of. I have known a flock of these birds alight on an 
apple tree, and have myself seen them twist off the fruit, one 
by one, strewing it in every direction around the tree, 
without observing that any of the depredators descended to 
pick them up. To a Paroquet, which I wounded and kept 
for some considerable time, I very often offered apples, which 
it uniformly rejected ; but burs or beech nuts, never. To 
another very beautiful one, which I brought from New 
Orleans, and which is now sitting in the room beside me, I 
have frequently offered this fruit, and also the seeds separately, 
which I never knew it to taste. Their local attachments, 
also, prove that food, more than climate, determines their 
choice of country. For even in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, 
and the Mississippi territory, unless in the neighbourhood of 
such places as have been described, it is rare to see them. 
The inhabitants of Lexington, as many of them assured me, 
scarcely ever observe them in that quarter. In passing from 
that place to Nashville, a distance of two hundred miles, I 
neither heard nor saw any, but at a place called Madison’s 
