The Cockatoo. 303 
tiful crest, composed of a tuft of elegant feathers, which 
he can raise or depress at pleasure. We meet with some 
of a beautiful white plumage, and the inside feathers 
of the crest of a pleasing yellow, with a spot of the 
same colour under each eye, and one upon the breast. 
The Cockatoos are natives of the Indian Islands and 
Australia, where they are found in great abundance. 
Their food consists of seeds and soft and stony fruits, 
which last their powerful bill enables them to break 
with ease. They are easily tamed when taken at an 
early age, after which they become familiar and even 
attached, but their imitative powers seldom go beyond 
a very few words added to their own cry of Cockatoo. 
In a wild state they are shy, and cannot easily be 
approached. The flesh of the young birds is accounted 
very good eating. The female is said to make her nest 
in the rotten limbs of trees, using nothing more than the 
accumulation of vegetable mould formed by the decayed 
parts of the bough. The eggs are white, without spots ; 
there are no more than two young at a time. The 
natives first find the nest by the pieces of bark and 
twigs which the old birds strip off the trees adjoining 
that in which the nest is situated. It is a remarkable 
fact that the bark is never stripped off the tree which 
contains the nest. 
Mr. Bennet, in speaking of the large black Cockatoo 
of New Holland, says, that if this bird observes on 
the trunk of a tree indications of a larva being within, 
it diligently labours to get at it with its powerful 
beak, and should the object of its pursuit be deep within 
the wood, as often happens, the trunk becomes so ex- 
tensively hacked, that a slight gust of wind will lay 
the tree prostrate. 
