Occasional Notes. 363 
thought that possibly it is cayenne pepper, that is, the 
fresh red peppers so abundant and important an article 
of diet with our Indians and growing so abundantly round 
the houses of these people, that bring about the yellow 
colour in the feathers of the domestic parrots of an 
Indian Settlement. There is, however, a great difficulty 
to be explained before accepting this otherwise very 
probable suggestion ; which is that, red peppers being 
almost as abundant in the civilized as in the Indian 
houses of this colony, our caged parrots often get almost, 
or quite as much of this food as do the Indian's parrots, 
and yet, as I have already said, our birds seldom if ever 
seem to change colour. In my own aviary, containing 
among other birds, several parrots, it is not unusual for 
three or four pounds of red peppers to be consumed in a 
week ; yet none of my birds have changed colour. 
While I write this I am preparing to journey once 
more into the country where special but probably mis- 
taken means are taken for feather culture, and I hope 
to be able then to acquire further information ; and when 
I come back, and am once more settled, I hope, if I am 
able to bear the infliction, to keep several parrots in 
separate cages, and to experiment on them with various 
kinds of food. 
A Point in the Psychology of Ants. — Many observers 
of ants have noticed that ants are able to distinguish 
whether other ants, of the same species, are from their 
own, or from foreign colonies, and that they welcome or 
shun, or even attack, these according as they are fellow- 
colonists or not ; and most of these observers have 
expressed their inability to explain the mode of this 
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