382 
CAROLINA PARROT. 
wliose word I can rely, assured me, that she herself had made 
the experiment, and that, whatever might be the cause, the 
cat had actually died either on that or the succeeding day. 
A French planter near Bayo Fourche pretended to account 
to me for this effect by positively asserting, that the seeds of 
the cockle burs on which the Paroquets so eagerly feed, were 
deleterious to cats; and thus their death was produced by 
eating the intestines of the bird. These matters might easily 
have been ascertained on the spot, which, however, a com- 
bination of trifling circumstances prevented me from doing. 
I several times carried a dose of the first description in my 
pocket till it became insufferable, without meeting with a 
suitable 'patient, on whom, like other professional gentlemen, 
I might conveniently make a fair experiment. 
I was equally unsuccessful in my endeavours to discover 
the time of incubation or manner of building among these 
birds. All agreed that they breed in hollow trees ; and 
several affirmed to me that they had seen their nests. Some 
said they carried in no materials ; others, that they did. Some 
made the eggs white ; others, speckled. One man assured me 
that he cut down a large beech tree, which was hollow, and in 
which he found the broken fragments of upwards of twenty 
Paroquet’s eggs, which were of a greenish yellow colour. The 
nests, though destroyed in their texture by the falling of the 
tree, appeared, he said, to be formed of small twigs glued to 
each other, and to the side of the tree, in the manner of the 
Chimney Swallow. He added, that if it were the proper 
season, he could point out to me the weed from which they 
procured the gluey matter. From all these contradictory 
accounts nothing certain can be deduced, except that they 
build in companies, in hollow trees. That they commence 
incubation late in summer, or very early in spring, I think 
highly probable, from the numerous dissections I made in the 
months of March, April, May, and June; and the great 
variety which I found in the colour of the plumage of the 
head and neck of both sexes, during the two former of these 
