"In appearance I greatly resemble my cousin, the glib-tongued parrot, but for some reason, though my tongue is thick and short like his, and my bill as charmingly curved, I cannot talk--that is, not to be understood by the human family, I mean, for among ourselves we keep up a very lively conversation, in very loud tones--a mark we think, as do some other folk, of good breeding. On the other hand there are people unreasonable enough not to like it, and they say we 'scream' and that our notes are 'ear-splitting' and that, though we are beautiful to look upon and extremely docile, our voices render us undesirable as cage birds or pets. The idea! As though we do not consider that very fortunate!--for a cage is a prison, no matter if the bars are gilded. For my part I prefer to be free even if I do have to hustle for a living and, between you and me, I think that a bird that can screech and doesn't screech when shut up in a little cage doesn't deserve to live. He ought to be killed and stuffed and set up in a museum for people to gape at. Don't you think so, too? "It is a great pity, but we paroquets are fast being exterminated. In some regions, where less than twenty-five years ago we were very plentiful, not a paroquet is now to be seen. We were once quite common in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and other parts of the United States. We are now to be found, in diminished numbers, in remote localities only of the lower Mississippi Valley and the Gulf States and in some regions of Florida. To escape from our enemy, the plume-hunter, we make our homes in practically uninhabitable regions. That is a long word for you little folks, but spell it out slowly, as I did, and you will understand what it means. "Our nesting-time is during February and March. Then colonies of us paroquets, sometimes numbering a thousand, flock to a cypress swamp and build our flimsy nests in forks of trees, near the end of a slender, horizontal branch. Often there are fifty nests in one small tree, each containing from four to five pretty, greenish-white eggs. It is a good thing we build our nests in wild and unsettled places, for they are so flimsy that the eggs are plainly visible from beneath. What a temptation to the bad boy they would be, and to the bad man, also! Some paroquets, however, choose a hollow tree in which to deposit their eggs. "Well, I have told you about all I know of myself and family, so will close by reciting in my very loudest and prettiest screech, so that all the neighborhood may hear, a few lines about a Mr. Macaw who was silly enough, after escaping from a cage, to return to it. He is a cousin of mine, a _distant_ cousin, for he was born in South America; but he wears the same colored coat and vest as I do, his tongue is just as thick, and his bill curves like a parrot's, also: MR. MACAW'S LESSON.