13 o PARROTS. 
whether they were content with deserted domiciles. The number of eggs is not 
mentioned. 
From their small size and engaging manners the love-birds are great favourites 
in captivity, although they are all more or less delicate. The rosy-faced species 
is, however, the most hardy, and will readily breed in confinement, often producing 
two broods in the year. That love-birds have not always the angelic disposition 
commonly attributed to them, is indicated by the following extract from a 
correspondent of Mr. Greene s, who writes, that I have a red-faced love-bird, 
to which it would puzzle you 
to apply the epithet ‘ amiable,’ 
for a more surly, ill-tempered 
little glutton never existed. She 
quarrels with her husband, whom 
she drives about, compels to feed 
her with partly digested food from 
his craw, and then thrashes if he 
does not sit closely enough to her, 
or if he dares to move before she 
is ready. In fact, a more hen¬ 
pecked wretch never lived, and 
yet he seems to like it, and to be 
specially proud of his beautiful but 
utterly unamiable wife.” 
The last group of this great subfamily is formed by the curious 
hanging parrots,—so called from their habit of sleeping head down¬ 
wards, suspended by their feet from a bough. These parrots, which are about the 
same size as love-birds, comprise twenty species, ranging from India and the 
Philippine Islands through the Malayan region as far east as Duke of York 
Island. They differ from all the other members of the subfamily in the thinness 
of the beak, in which the length exceeds the depth; the upper mandible being 
long and but little curved, while the profile of the lower one slopes upwards with 
very little convexity. In all of them the under surface of the remiges and 
tail-feathers is of a bright verditer blue. They are brilliantly coloured, with 
green as the predominant tint; and Dr. Guillemard describes a species from the 
A GROUP OF HANGING PARROTS. 
Hanging Parrots. 
