pical fruits, which lay themselves out to deserve
the kind offices of monkeys, parrots, toucans, hornbills, and other
such large and powerful fruit-feeders. Fruits which arrange themselves
for a _clientele_, of this character have usually thick or nauseous
rinds, prickly husks, or other deterrent integuments; but they are full
within of juicy pulp, embedding stony or nutlike seeds, which pass
undigested through the gizzards of their swallowers.

For a similar reason, the actual prickly pears themselves are
attractively coloured. I need hardly point out, I suppose, at the
present time of day, that such tints in the vegetable world act like
the gaudy posters of our London advertisers. Fruits and flowers which
desire to attract the attention of beasts, birds, or insects, are
tricked out in flaunting hues of crimson, purple, blue, and yellow;
fruits and flowers which could only be injured by the notice of animals
are small and green, or dingy and inconspicuous.

PRETTY POLL.

It is an error of youth to despise parrots for their much talking.
Loquacity isn't always a sign of empty-headedness, nor is silence a
sure proof of weight and wisdom. Biologists, for their part, know
better than that. By common consent, they rank the parrot group as the
very head and crown of bird creation. Not, of course, because pretty
Poll can talk (in a state of nature, parrots only chatter somewhat
meaninglessly to one another), but because the group display on the
whole, all round, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness, and
of adaptability to circumstances than any other birds, including even
their cunning and secretive rivals, the ravens, the jackdaws, the
crows, and the magpies.

What are the efficient causes of this exceptionally high intelligence
in parrots? Well, Mr. Herbert Spencer, I believe, was the first to
point out the intimate connection that exists throughout the animal
world between mental development and the power of grasping an object
all round so as to know exactly its shape and its tactile properties.
The possession of an effective prehensile organ--a hand or its
equivalent--seems to be the first great requisite for the evolution of
a high order of intellect. Man and the monkeys, for example, have a
pair of hands; and in their case one can see at a glance how dependent
is their intelligence upon these grasping organs. All human arts base
themselves ultimately upon the human hand; an