THE height of our ambition in the bird-keeping line for many years was to have a Parrot of our own: we were not at all particular as to the species, or as to the colour of the bird, whether grey, green, or white, whether long or short-tailed, we did not greatly care, so that the creature could be called a Parrot, and was able to talk.

A friend of ours possessed a fine Green Parrot that had taken, why we know not, an inveterate dislike to us, and invariably accosted us when we entered the room where it was caged with the uncomplimentary exclamation: "Get out, you dirty brute!" but in spite of this unmerited reproach, for at that time we were especially solicitous about our appearance, we would have given anything to own the bird, than which we have seldom, if ever, heard one that pronounced quite a number of sentences so distinctly.

Then another acquaintance had a very clever Grey Parrot, that almost spoke as plainly as our green detractor, if with a less extended vocabulary, and another had a white Cockatoo of Australian extraction, which, if it had not a great deal to say for itself, was an accomplished acrobat, and withal so handsome, as it erected its bright sulphur crest, that one could not but overlook its linguistic deficiencies in favour of its charming personal appearance.

Green Ring-necked Parrakeets, Australian Broadtails and Cockatiels, and the marvellously beautiful Rosella and Pennant, the tiny Love-birds, and the Dove-coloured Parrot with its breast of rose - how we envied their owners, or at least longed to have one like them of our own.

Yet, had our wish been gratified then, it is probable we should not have been able to retain the object of our desires very long, for we were absolutely ignorant of the treatment necessary for preserving one of these birds in health.

Bread and milk we had been assured was the only proper food for a Parrot, and upon that strange diet not a few of those with which we had been acquainted were habitually fed, and some of them even survived its administration for a considerable time, thanks, no doubt, to an exceptionally fine constitution.

"What is the proper time of year to buy a Parrot?" is a question that we are very frequently asked, and to which we reply, In the summer time; that is to say from June to the end of August, or September if the weather is exceptionally fine: if you buy one during the cold season it will be apt, even if you carry it home yourself, to take a chill upon being brought out of the dealer's stuffy shop, for, mark you, all bird-dealers' shops are stuffy; while if it is sent to you from a distance, it will, if alive when it reaches you, be certain to die in a few days, or, at the outside, weeks after you have received it, from bronchitis or inflammation of the lungs, the foundation of which has been laid on the journey. Let a bird be ever so well packed up when it leaves the hands of the dealer, it will be certain to be exposed to the cold through the curiosity of the railway porters, who seem perfectly unable to let a bird pass through their hands without personal inspection, and if to the exposure thus entailed upon it, we add a sojourn of some hours in a cold railway van, the wonder is not that so many of the birds sent by rail die, but that any of them survive. We have known instances where birds had been securely packed in boxes, the lids of which were screwed down, and the air-holes protected by perforated zinc and muslin, which on reaching their destination were found to have had the protecting gauze torn away, and even the screws taken out, so that the porters should see what sort of a thing they were handling. In summertime this curiosity on the part of the railway officials is not likely to be productive of such serious consequences as in winter; but, nevertheless, we would advise our readers never to send to a distance for a bird if they can by any possibility buy one near at hand, and carry it home themselves. We would prefer to give £ 2 for a bird that we could inspect previous to purchase, and take away with us, rather than half that amount for one that would have to be sent to us by rail.

Should it, however, be decided to buy a Parrot in the winter, or spring, the purchaser must take it home in a snug box, and place the cage it is to inhabit in a warm room, taking the precaution to cover it over on top and three sides with a thick baize covering, to place it below the gas, and having ascertained by inspection what the dealer had been feeding it on, to give it the same food; after having had the bird for some time, say a week or so, during which period it must on no account be exposed to any cold, but the temperature be kept even, say about 700, the baize cover may be gradually removed, and the bird accustomed to the ordinary temperature of the house, but in any case it will be well to cover it up at night.

We now come to a point which is of the utmost importance to observe, namely, the treatment of a newly-purchased Parrot during the night. Many people are apt to forget that when the light and the fire are out during the night in a room which had been very warm during the day-time, the temperature falls a considerable number of degrees, and the bird gets chilled, and too often dies. If the owner has a fire in her bed-room, let her take the cage up with her when she is going to bed herself, but if not, let the fire be well banked up before retiring to rest, and let no housemaid enter the room in the morning before the mistress of the bird: for housemaids, as a rule, even when not actually inimical to Parrots, are utterly regardless of them, and have a habit of throwing up the window, even on the coldest morning, and letting the chilly outside air blow in keenly on the bird, which feels it all the more from having been kept snug and warm before; and it is this mauvais quart d'heure in the morning before the fire is lit, and while the room is being "dusted", that is fatal to so many Parrots, whose owners wonder how "poor Polly" can possibly have taken cold.

It may here be asked, "Supposing my Parrot to have taken cold, what is the best course to adopt?" Well, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, the bird will, in spite of every care, gradually get worse and die; but in the hundreth "she" has an extraordinarily good constitution, and if kept in an equable temperature of from 70 to 750, and fed on soft food, soaked bread and boiled maize, for instance, and has tepid or lukewarm water to drink, she will recover: but prevention is better than cure; see that your bird does not catch cold, and you will not have the trouble of nursing it, and the grief of seeing it suffer, and probably die.

Avoid purchasing a Parrot in the winter time, and especially avoid having one sent to you a long distance by rail; but curb your natural impatience to become the owner of a Parrot until summer, and, where practicable, carry home your prize from the place where you have bought it; and, having got it home, see that is exposed to no draught, even in summer, but is gradually accustomed to the ordinary variations of temperature in your house.

In the matter of food for Parrots, the public has yet very much to learn: the traditional bread and milk, like the customary hard-boiled egg for Canaries, is a mistake: Parrots are graminivorous, that is to say, vegetable feeders; a few of them, it is true, live almost exclusively on honey, and a less number are partially insectivorous in their habits, but no known bird of this genus' touches flesh in its wild state, the rumoured partiality of the Nestor notabilis for live lambs notwithstanding. Therefore to feed a bird of this description on animal food, such as milk, butter, bits from the table, bones and so on, is to force it to partake of an unnatural diet, which is certain, sooner or later, to produce disease, and ultimately to destroy the bird. To argue that because a Parrot appears to enjoy such an abnormal course of feeding, it is good for it, is about as sensible as to say that children love sweetmeats, and may, without endangering their health, be fed largely, if not exclusively, upon them, for Parrots, like children, are not always, indeed never, able to discriminate between those things that are suitable for them, and those that are injurious.

The larger Parrots require large seeds, such as maize, oats, dari, buckwheat, and dry biscuits (without milk or butter), nuts of various sorts, Brazilian, cob, and especially monkey nuts; and the smaller varieties, canary seed, millet, hemp, and a few oats occasionally. As all these birds in their wild state subsist more or less on unripe, or at least soft seeds, and fruit of different kinds, apples, pears, grapes, and oranges may be included, with discretion, in their bill of fare; and a portion of the different kinds of seeds that are offered to them should always be supplied either boiled or soaked in water until soft.

Again, these birds should always have access to water: it is true that many of them will exist for a long time, even on a diet of dry seed, without drinking, but Parrots in their wild state always drink, if even some of them confine their potations to sucking the drops of dew off the leaves and grass; and in captivity water is even more necessary to maintain them in health, for the staple of their food is dry, and they have not the chance of sipping the pearly drops of dew. Deprivation of water produces indigestion, causes heat and irritation of the skin, and often leads to the poor bird stripping itself bare of feathers.

Although a Parrot has a strong beak, it has no teeth, and is unable to masticate its food, swallowing the smaller seeds whole, that is after having stripped them of their husks, and the larger in little fragments, which require softening in the crop, and triturating in the muscular stomach or gizzard before they can be digested, and serve for the nourishment of the bird. To supply the want of teeth, Nature has taught the Parrot to swallow a certain number of small, sharp-edged stones, which effectually reduce the food to a pulp, and prepare it for absorption by the glands of the stomach and intestines: yet how few owners of Parrots ever think of supplying their pets with such small artificial teeth as we have alluded to.

Many Parrots, especially the Australian species, appear in their wild state to evince a preference for brackish, or slightly salt, water, over fresh; yet we suppose it has not occurred to one Parrot keeper out of a thousand to supply the bird he or she owns with a morsel of rock salt: in fact many people look upon salt as rank poison for any bird, a belief in which we were strictly educated, but which we now know to be without foundation in fact: salt, instead of being injurious to Parrots, is very beneficial, and should always be supplied to them: very sparingly, of course, at first, but when the Parrot has got over the novelty of the thing, like the pastrycook's errand-boy, it may be safely trusted with a lump in its cage, it will not take more than is good for it.

A Parrot is naturally an extremely active and lively bird, and should never be kept in a small cage, in which not only it is seen to disadvantage, but is apt to injure its plumage, especially its tail, and the ends of the flight feathers in the wings: even when kept in a large-sized cage, it should, when practicable, be allowed a fly, every now and then, about the room, which it will much enjoy, and when its brief period of liberty has expired, a bonne douche, in the shape of a morsel of biscuit, a nut, or a piece of apple, will soon lure it back to its domicile, to which, after a while, it will return of its own accord, when it is tired of rambling about.

Road grit, well washed to free it from dust and other impurities, is the best thing with which to supply Parrots in lieu of a carpet for the floor of their abode, and the absurd grillage with which the cages of these birds are invariably provided when purchased new, should be immediately removed; for, instead of answering any useful purpose, it is positively injurious, hindering the Parrot from reaching the sharp grit on the bottom of the cage; and was, doubtless, invented by some lazy owner, who objected to the trouble of cleaning out "Polly"'s habitation as frequently as he should have done: which brings us to the subject of cleanliness.

This virtue, we have been assured on very high authority, is akin to Godliness, but without going quite as far as that, we are bound to say that it is of the utmost importance, if the health and beauty of the captive Parrot are to be taken into consideration. When refuse food and the droppings of the creature itself are allowed to accumulate on the floor of a bird's cage, bad smells arise from fermentation, not to say putrefaction, and, it is scarcely necessary to insist on such a point, are apt to give rise to low fever, and other serious ailments: the perches, too, must be frequently scraped or washed, or the Parrot, whose legs are so short that the breast feathers rub on what the bird sits on, will soon present a bedraggled, poverty-stricken appearance, that will cause it to neglect the rest of its person, and finally to become an object of disgust to those who see it, instead of, as it otherwise would be, "a thing of beauty" and "a joy for ever."

Parrots are great dandies, and are fond of preening and arranging their beautiful dress, but let this once become seriously soiled, they will give up the care of their toilet in despair, and degenerate into hopeless slatterns and slovens. In order to enable them to maintain the natural beauty of their coat, these birds, in their wild state, bathe freely, and should always be provided with the means of "tubbing" when they please in captivity. Some of them will not wash themselves in a cage, but as soon as they are allowed to fly about a room, will pop into a pan of water, if one is placed where they can readily reach it, and give themselves a good washing, after which they will sit in the sun, and pass every feather through their beak, until they are as neat as a new pin, and as glossy as if they had just come out of the woods.

Some birds however, in ail probability individuals who have been brought up by hand from the nest, cannot be prevailed upon to wash themselves at all; in which case it will be necessary to give them, not a good scrubbing, but a gentle shower-bath of luke-warm water from a garden syringe, every now and then: and after the first time or two they will cease to be afraid, and even like and look for their washing, which, we need scarcely observe, must only be done in warm weather. Or the cage may be placed out of doors during the continuance of a genial summer shower, which "Poll" will much appreciate, holding out his wings, and spreading out his tail to catch the falling drops; this we have seen our acclimatised Parrakeets doing, even in winter time, in the out-of-doors aviary where we keep them all the year round.

Never put a Parrot in a round cage: nothing mars the beauty of its plumage so much, for in turning about it is obliged to press against the bars of the cage in whichever direction it moves, and so the feathers get frayed and broken: a square cage with two perches in it, one placed crosswise above the other, is the proper abode for a Parrot, and the larger the dwelling, the better and more healthy will be the bird.

A cross-bar stand to which the creature is chained by the leg is perhaps preferable to a cage for the Macaws and larger Cockatoos, but care must be taken that the part upon which the bird sits is not cased with tin, but made of wood, the ends of which only should be covered with metal: but a perch of iron or zinc is too cold for the feet of a Parrot, who gets cramp, and pains in his limbs from sitting on such an unnatural kind of perch, which a considerate owner will no longer compel him to use, when he knows what suffering it entails upon the unfortunate bird.

Parrots, as a rule, have as much individuality, not to say character, as human beings, each has its peculiar idiosyncrasy, and no hard and fast rule can be laid down for their management, as each several bird must be studied and treated according to the disposition it displays: this is particularly true of the large Parrots, including the Cockatoos, but the smaller species, namely the Parrakeets and Love-birds, thrive better in an aviary than they do in a cage. These small creatures very seldom become as much attached to their owners as their larger brethren frequently do, and we have never known an instance in which they did not prefer the society of a member or members of their own race to that of the master or mistress who had bought and cared for them; whereas, the contrary rule very frequently obtains with regard to the large Parrots. In any case a bird that may be comparatively tame and gentle when kept in a cage, or chained to a stand, by itself, is very apt to become wild, even savage, when placed in the society of a companion of its own kind, although this is by no means invariably the case; and, as we said before, the idiosyncrasy of the bird must be considered in this respect.

Some Parrots and Parrakeets will become so tame that, especially in the country, they may be permitted to enjoy almost perfect liberty in the garden, returning regularly to their owner's call, or at all events when prompted by the demands of appetite, for which reason it is always well to let them out, at least at first, before they have had a meal, and to hold out the sweetmeat, in a manner of speaking, to them when it is wished that they should return to their cage.

Some species are gifted with more, much more, of the homing instinct than others; the Parrots proper and the Lories, for example, far exceeding the old world Parrakeets, such as the Ring-necked and Alexandrine, in this respect, while the Australian broad-tails come about midway between the other two families. The Australian Parrakeets will generally return to their mates, if the latter, whether male or female, be placed where they can see and hear each other, but the Long-tailed Indian Parrakeets, once they get out of their cages, simply fly straight away, like an arrow from a bow, rejoicing, no doubt, in their new-found freedom, and utterly oblivious, apparently, of the guid wife or the guid man at home.

The Love-birds, too, have no idea of returning to their prison, and, once they escape, are very seldom seen again by their owners or their mates, to whom they really bear nothing like the affection with the possession of which they are popularly credited.

The Grey Parrots, the large Green Parrots, commonly called Amazons, the Macaws, and the Cockatoos are the best homers, then come the beautiful Indian Lories, and the Australian Grass Parrakeets; all the remaining species of the race are not in this respect to be depended on; once their liberty is regained, death is by them preferred to a return to captivity, even when a former mate calls to and tries to entice them back again.

We have often been asked which is the best way to teach one of these birds to speak, and have replied that there is no royal road: patience and perseverance alone will succeed, though some of them it must be admitted are much more ready learners than others: few of the hen birds, for instance, ever become accomplished linguists, although to this rule, as to every other, there are certain exceptions; but as, in the case of small birds, the gift of song is chiefly confined to the male, so in the Parrot tribe the capacity for learning to repeat articulate sounds is not usually the prerogative of the gentler sex.

For a talker then, select a male, and repeat to him slowly and distinctly the word or sentence it is wished to teach him; the bird will probably take it up word by word, not always beginning at the beginning, but occasionally in the middle of the phrase, as in the case of a Jardine Parrot belonging to the Hon. and Rev. F. G. Dutton, which was learning "Polly put the kettle on", and began by repeating "kettle, kettle", and gradually added the other words until it had learned to say the sentence correctly.

Captive Parrots, poor things! are frequently the subjects of disease, too often induced by errors of management on the part of their owners, who, not knowing any better, pamper their pets with unsuitable dainties, and then wonder why their birds should be ill and die. Some of these complaints we have already touched upon, but there are others, such as consumption, which can only be cured if taken in hand at the very commencement of the attack, and are much easier to prevent than to cure: exposure to a low temperature, and insufficiently nutritious diet, are the exciting causes of this complaint, for which the remedies are continuous warmth and appropriate and nutritious food: many drugs and nostrums have been recommended, but we have not faith in any of them. The symptoms of consumption are gradual emaciation, distaste for food, shivering, listlessness, sometimes a little cough, and in the latter stages diarrhaea: when the last complication has set in the case is hopeless. Another complaint, often fatal with newly-imported birds, is fever, generally of a typhoid character, which is almost incurable: a bird so afflicted is inordinately thirsty, drinking as much, in some cases, as a pint of water per diem. In slight attacks we have found dilute, or aromatic sulphuric acid in the proportion of ten drops to the ounce of water productive of benefit; the diet should be nutritious,-sponge-cake, a little bread and milk, (which latter article is only admissible as a medicine, or for very young subjects) and, where there is a tendency to dysentery, that is to say blood-stained evacuations, mutton broth in which rice has been cooked.

Pneumonia, or inflammation of the lungs, and bronchitis are the result of a chill from the bird having been placed in a draught, and differ from each other rather in degree than in kind; the former being a clogging of the minuter structures of the lungs by a sudden rush of blood from the exterior to the interior of the body; and the latter, a similar affection of the larger ramifications of the air passages, or bronchial tubes, which get more or less lined and obstructed by mucus: great warmth is the only cure, as we have already observed, but prevention is easy.

Diarrhaea is generally caused by improper feeding, unless it is symptomatic of consumption or fever; it is treated by a return to a natural diet, and the addition of some powdered chalk to the drinking water, preceded by a dose of castor oil.

Feather eating is a veritable disease, and one, too, that is extremely difficult to cure. Various remedial plans have been suggested, but some cases defy every attempt, and the poor victims remain regular scarecrows to the end of their days, which are generally prematurely ended by cold. Occasionally turning the bird loose into a room fitted with perches and logs of wood will effect a cure; or giving it a companion of its own or a kindred species, though we have known the new arrival to catch the complaint, and soon make itself as great an object as its companion. Fixing a tin collar round the bird's neck, anointing the breast with oil, strewing the bottom of the cage with feathers, have answered in some cases, and failed in others. So that the owner of a feather-eater would do well to give all the above plans a trial, so that if one did not succeed another might. Shower-baths, too, have been suggested, but are not generally successful; parasites must of course be looked for, and guarded against, and if there is any skin irritation, a cooling diet, consisting largely of green food, might be tried: but some cases defy every attempt to cure them, and all are more or less troublesome, requiring a great deal of patience and perseverance if any good is to result from the adoption of remedial measures. Some months since we bought a Green Parrot that had plucked all the feathers off its breast, and was, generally, in very poor condition; we turned it out into a garden aviary well supplied with logs, and the bird is now in perfect plumage, and as sleek and handsome as possible.

If it is desired to breed Parrots, they should be placed in as roomy a cage or aviary as practicable, unless so tame that they can be permitted to have the range of the house; their abode must be fitted up with hollow logs of suitable size, suspended high up against the wall, to keep them out of reach of mice, or a small barrel, with half a cocoa-nut husk firmly cemented to the bottom, may be placed at their disposal, and will often be taken possession of in preference to a hollow log. Boxes with a flat bottom surface are objectionable, on account of the eggs rolling about, and running the risk of taking cold, for few members of the Parrot family make any nest, properly so called, but deposit their eggs on the bare wood of their abode.

W. T. G.