PDF - Wallace Online

in ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS 293that, more than any others, they serve to give a special characterto equatorial ornithology. These are the Parrots, thePigeons, and the Picariae, to each of which groups we willdevote some attention.ParrotsThe parrots, forming the order Psittaci of naturalists, area remarkable group of fruit -eating birds, of such high andpeculiar organisation that they are often considered to standat the head of the entire class.They are pre-eminentlycharacteristic of the intertropical zone, being nowhere absentwithin its limits (except from absolutely desert regions), andthey are generally so abundant and so conspicuous as tooccupy among birds the place assigned to butterflies amonginsects. A few species range far into the temperate zones.One reaches Carolina in North America, another the MagellanStraits in South America ;in Africa they only extend a fewdegrees beyond the southern tropic in North-Western India;they reach 35 north latitude, but in the Australian regionthey range farthest towards the pole, being found not only inNew Zealand, but as far as the Macquarie islands in 54south, where the climate is very cold and boisterous, butsufficiently uniform to supply vegetable food throughout theyear. There is hardly any part of the equatorial zone inwhich the traveller will not soon have his attention called tosome members of the parrot tribe. In Brazil the great blueand yellow or crimson macaws may be seen every eveningwending their way homeward in pairs, almost as commonlyas rooks with us, while innumerable parrots and parraquetsattract attention by their harsh cries when disturbed fromsome favourite fruit-tree. In the Moluccas and New Guineawhite cockatoos and gorgeous lories in crimson and blue arethe very commonest of birds.No group of birds perhaps no other group of animalsexhibits within the same limited number of genera and speciesso wide a range and such an endless variety of colour. As arule, parrots may be termed green birds, the majority of thespecies having this colour as the basis of their plumagerelieved by caps, gorgets, bands, and wing-spots of other andbrighter hues. Yet this general green tint sometimes changes