A peculiar and exceptional offshoot of the parrot group is the brush-tongued lory, several species of which are common in Australia and India. These interesting birds are parrots which have a resemblance to humming birds. Flitting about from tree to tree with great rapidity, they thrust their long extensible tongues, penciled with honey-gathering hairs, into the tubes of many big tropical blossoms. The lories, indeed, live entirely on nectar, and they are so common in the region they have made their own that the larger flowers there present the appearance of having been developed with a special view to their tastes and habits, as well as to the structure of their peculiar brush-like honey-collector. In most parrots the mouth is dry and the tongue horny; but in the lories it is moist and much more like the same organ in the humming-birds and the sun-birds. The prevalence of very large and brilliantly-colored flowers in the Malayan region must be set down for the most part to the selective action of the color-loving, brush-tongued parrots. The Australian continent and New Zealand, as everybody knows, are the countries where everything goes by contraries. And it is here that the parrot group has developed some of its most curious offshoots. One would imagine beforehand that no two birds could be more unlike in every respect than the gaudy, noisy, gregarious cockatoos and the sombre, nocturnal, solitary owls. Yet the New Zealand owl-parrot is a lory which has assumed all the appearances and habits of an owl. A lurker in the twilight or under the shades of night, burrowing for its nest in holes in the ground, it has dingy brown plumage like the owls, with an undertone of green to bespeak its parrot origin; while its face is entirely made up of two great disks, surrounding the eyes, which succeed in giving it a most marked and unmistakable owl-like appearance.