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330 GEOGRAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. [part iv.
marked exceptions to the rule which limits the parrot tribe to
the tropical and sub-tropical regions, roughly defined as extend-
ing about 30° on each side of the equator. In America a species
of Conurus reaches the straits of Magellan on the south, while
another inhabits the United States, and once extended to the
great lakes, although now confined to the south-eastern districts.
In Africa parrots do not reach the northern tropic, owing to the
desert nature of the country ; and in the south they barely reach
the Orange Eiver. In India they extend to about 35° N. in the
western Himalayas ; and in the Australian region, not only to
New Zealand but to Macquarie Islands in 54° S., the farthest
point from the equator reached by the group. But although
found in all the tropical regions they are most unequally dis-
tributed. Africa is poorest, possessing only 6 genera and 25
species ; * the Oriental region is also very poor, having but 6
genera and 29 species ; the Neotropical region is much richer,
ha,ving 14 genera and 141 species ; while the smallest in area
and the least tropical in climate—the Australian region, pos-
sesses 31 genera and 176 species, and it also possesses exclusively
5 of the families, Trichoglossidse, Platycercidee, Cacatuidse,
Nestoridee, and Stringopidse. The portion of the earth's surface
that contains the largest number of parrots in proportion to its
area is, undoubtedly, the ^ustro-Malayan sub-region, including
the islands from Celebes to the Solomon Islands. The area of
these islands is probably not one-fifteenth of that of the four
tropical regions, yet they contain from one-fifth to one-fourth of
all the known parrots. In this area too are found many of the
most remarkable forms,—all the crimson lories, the great black
Cockatoos, the pigmy Nasiterna, the raquet-tailed Prioniturus,
and the bareheaded Dasyptilus.
The almost universal distribution of Parrots wherever the
climate is sufficiently mild or uniform to furnish them with a
perennial supply of food, no less than their varied details of
organization, combined with a great uniformity of general type,
—tell us, in unmistakable language, of a very remote antiquity.
The only early record of extinct parrots is, however, in the
Miocene of France, where remains apparently allied to the West