Mr. Sidney Buxton writes a very amusing paper, in the
Animal World, for December, on the difficulties of acclimatising parrots and cockatoos—an attempt made by his father, the late Mr. Charles Buxton—and it does not appear that climate is a difficulty. "They seem just as cheerful in winter as in summer, and we have never been able to trace mortality to cold. They really die, I fear, a sudden and violent death. A high wind, the destructive gun, destroying hawk, and possibly starvation when lost, make havoc in their ranks." But the killing-down of parrots by violent deaths cannot be peculiar to England. The real reason seems to be that, for some reason, the cockatoos and parrots do not breed freely in England, though such of them as are brought here, live out their individual lives, if properly protected. If they bred as they breed in the tropics, they would not be killed out by such causes as hawks, high winds, and ignorant gamekeepers. But for some reason or other, the change of place seems unfavourable to the multiplication of their numbers. Mr. Buxton's paper is full of humour, and his description of the demeanour of two "Amazon parrots," who were the terror of all the other birds, and not only got all the seed to themselves, but were not even in a hurry to devour it, but cared for their digestion as much at least as they cared for the seed, must surely be intended as a parable on woman's rights. The Amazon parrots " cared for nobody," though "everybody cared for them, and were mortally afraid of their beaks." It will be much the same with the Amazon politicians.
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