CAROLINA PARROT. 
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fruits. That food which the paroquet prefers to all 
others is the seeds of the cockle bur, a plant rarely- 
found in the lower parts of Pennsylvania or New York ; 
but which unfortunately grows in too great abundance 
along the shores 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 separate^, 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 
