he
rind is put there as a barrier against small thieves who would rob the
sweet pulp, but be absolutely incapable of carrying away and dispersing
the large and richly-stored seeds it covers.

Parrots and toucans, however, have no knives and forks to cut off the
rind with; but as monkeys use their fingers, so the birds use for the
same purpose their sharp and powerful bills. No better nut-crackers and
fruit-parers could possibly be found. The parrot, in particular, has
developed for the purpose his curved and inflated beak--a wonderful
weapon, keen as a tailor's scissors, and moved by powerful muscles on
either side of the face which bring together the cutting edges with
extraordinary energy. The way the bird holds the fruit gingerly in one
claw, while he strips off the rind dexterously with his under-hung
lower mandible, and keeps a sharp look-out meanwhile on either side
with those sly and stealthy eyes of his for a possible intruder,
suggests to the observing mind the whole living drama of his native
forest. One sees in that vivid world the watchful monkey ever ready to
swoop down upon the tempting tail-feathers of his hereditary foe: one
sees the canny parrot ever prepared for his rapid attack, and ever
eager to make him pay with five joints of his tail for his impertinent
interference with an unoffending fellow-citizen of the arboreal
community.

Still, there are parrots and parrots, of course. Not all this vast
family are in all things of like passions one with another. The great
black cockatoo, for example, the largest of the tribe, lives almost
entirely off the central shoot or 'cabbage' of palm-trees: an expensive
kind of food, for when once the 'cabbage' is eaten the tree dies
forthwith, so that each black cockatoo must have killed in his time
whole groves of cabbage-palms. Others, again, feed off fruits and
seeds; and not a few are entirely adapted for flower-haunting and
honey-sucking.

As a group, the parrots are comparatively modern birds. Indeed, they
could have no place in the world till the big tropical fruits and nuts
were beginning to be developed. And it is now pretty certain that
fruits and nuts are for the most part of very recent and special
evolution. To put it briefly, the monkeys and parrots developed the
fruits and nuts, while the fruits and nuts returned the compliment by
developing conversely the monkeys and parrots. In other words, both
types grew up side by side in mutual dependence, an