PARR. This name was originally applied to small Salmonoids which are abundant in British rivers, and were for a long time considered to constitute a distinct species (Salmo salmulus). They possess the broad head, short snout, and large eye characteristic of young Salmonoids, and are ornamented on the sides of the body and tail with about eleven or more broad dark cross-bars, the so-called parr-marks. However, John Shaw proved, by experiment, that these fishes represent merely the first stage of growth of the salmon, before it assumes, at an age of two years, and when about six inches long, the silvery smolt-dress preparatory to its first migration to the sea. The parr-marks are produced by a deposit of black pigment in the skin, and appear very soon after the exclusion of the fish from the egg; they are still visible for some time below the new coat of scales of the smolt-stage, but have entirely disappeared on the first return of the young salmon from the sea. Although the juvenile condition of the parr is now almost universally admitted, it is a remarkable fact, which has not yet received a satisfactory explanation, that many male parr, from 7 to 8 inches long, have their sexual organs fully developed, and that their milt has all the fertilizing properties of the seminal fluid of a full-grown and sexually matured salmon. On the other hand, no female parr has ever been obtained with mature ova. Not only the salmon, but also the other species of Sαlmo, the grayling, and probably also the Coregoni, pass through a parr-stage of growth. The young of all these fishes are barred, the salmon having generally eleven or more bars, and the parr of the migratory trout from nine to ten, or two or three more than the river-trout. In other respects these parr are very similar to ...one another; and in the first year of their life it is very difficult and sometimes almost impossible to ascertain their parentage, whilst in the second year the specific characteristics become more and more conspicuous. In some of the small races or species of river-trout the parr-marks are retained throughout life, but subject to changes in intensity of colour.
PARR, Samuel (1747-1825), the son of Samuel Parr, surgeon at Harrow-on-the-Hill, was born there 15th January 1747. At Easter 1752 he was sent to Harrow School as a free scholar, where he made the acquaintance of many pupils, such as Bishop Bennet, Sir William Jones, and Warburton Lytton, who became eminent in after life. They read in the same class, they shared in the same sports, and their friendship lasted from youth to age. As Parr was destined for his father’s profession, he was removed from school in the spring of 1761, and for the next few years assisted his father in his practice. When the old surgeon realized that his son was but ill-adapted for this pursuit, the boy was sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge (autumn of 1765), but on his father’s death shortly afterwards he was compelled, through lack of means, to return to Harrow. From February 1767 to the close of 1771 he acted as head assistant at Harrow School to Dr Sumner, a teacher whom he idolized, and had under his care many pupils, of whom Sheridan was the best known. When the headmaster died in September 1771 Parr became a candidate for the place, but was rejected, chiefly on account of his youth, whereupon he started another school at Stanmore, and drew after him about forty of his former scholars. After a trial of five years he found himself unable to bear up against the attractions of his old establishment, and dismissed the boys entrusted to his charge, becoming first the headmaster of Colchester Grammar School (1776-78) and then of Norwich School (1778-86). The small rectory of Asterby in Lincolnshire was conferred upon him in 1780, and it was followed three years later by the vicarage of Hatton near Warwick. Though he exchanged this latter benefice for Wadenhoe in Northamptonshire in 1789, he stipulated to be allowed to reside, as assistant curate, in the parsonage of Hatton. In this retirement he spent the rest of his days, cheered by the attractions of an excellent library, described by Mr H. G. Bohn in Bibliotheca Parriana (1827), and the converse of his classical friends, some of whom, like Porson and E. H. Barker, passed many months in his company. The degree of LL.D, was conferred on him by the university of Cambridge in 1781. Parr died at Hatton vicarage, 6th March 1825, and was buried in the chancel of its church. He had to middle age felt the pressure of poverty, but through the gift in 1788 of the prebendal stall of Wenlock Barns in St Paul’s Cathedral (then worth only a reserved rent of £20 a year, but on the lapse of the lease in 1804 a preferment of considerable value), and through the purchase for him by his friends in 1789 of an annuity of £300, he died possessed of a large fortune.
Dr Parr’s writings fill several volumes, but they are all beneath the reputation which he acquired through the variety of his knowledge and the dogmatism of his conversation. The chief of them are his character of Charles James Fox; his Latin preface, a long eulogy of Burke, North, and Fox, to a new edition of three books of Bellendenus; and his reprint of the Tracts of Warburton and a Warburtoηian, not admitted into their works, a volume still not without interest for its scathing exposure of Warburton and Hurd. The character of Parr’s compositions may be gathered from a passage in the Edinburgh Review (October 1802) on his Spital sermon, “a discourse of no common length . . . . an immeasurable mass of notes which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man since the beginning of the world.” Even amid the terrors of the French Revolution he adhered to Whiggism, and his correspondence included every man of eminence, either literary or political, who adopted the same creed. There are two memoirs of his life, one by the Rev. William Field (1828, 2 vols.), the other, with his works and his letters, by John Johnstone (1828, 8 vols.); and E. H. Barker published in 1828-29 two volumes of Parriana, a confused mass of information on Parr and his friends. An essay on his life is included in De Quincey’s works, vol. v., and a little volume of the Aphorisms, Opinions, and Reflections of the late Dr Pan· appeared in 1826.
PARRAMATTA, a town of New South Wales, at the head of the navigation of the Parramatta river, and 14 miles to the west of Sydney, with which it is connected by railway, was one of the earliest inland settlements, and the seat of many of the public establishments connected with the working of the convict system. Many of these still remain in another form (the district hospital, the lunatic asylum, the gaol, two asylums for the infirm and destitute, the Protestant and Catholic orphan schools), involving a Government expenditure which partly sustains the business of the town. Parramatta was one of the earliest seats of the tweed manufacture, but its principal industrial dependence has been on the fruit trade. With the exception of Prospect and Pennant Hills, where there is an outburst of trap rock, the surface soil is the disintegration of the Wainamatta shale, which is well suited for orangeries and orchards. The value of the annual fruit crop is estimated at <£100,000. The earlier governors had their country residence near the town, but the domain is now a public park in the hands of the municipality. Close by was an early observatory where, in 1822, were made the observations for the Parramatta Catalogue, numbering 7385 stars, but it has long been abandoned. The Church of England grammar school (King’s School), which accommodates ninety boarders, is on the north side of the river. The population in 1881 was 8453.
PARRHASIUS, of Ephesus, was one of the greatest painters of Greece. He settled in Athens, and may be ranked among the Attic artists. The period óf his activity is fixed by the anecdote which Xenophon records of the conversation between him and Socrates on the subject of art; he was therefore distinguished as a painter before 399 b.c. Seneca relates a tale that Parrhasius bought one of the Olynthians whom Philip sold into slavery, 346 b.c. (see Olynthus), and tortured him in order to have a model for his picture of Prometheus; but the story, which is similar to one told of Michelangelo, is chronologically impossible. Another tale recorded of him describes his contest with Zeuxis. The latter painted some grapes so perfectly that birds came to peck at them. He then called on Parrhasius to draw aside the curtain and show his picture, but, finding that his rival’s picture was the curtain itself, he acknowledged himself to be surpassed, for Zeuxis had deceived birds, but Parrhasius had deceived Zeuxis. The arrogance and vanity of Parrhasius are the subject of many other anecdotes. He dressed himself in the purple robe, golden crown, and staff of a king, called himself the prince, and boasted his descent from Apollo. As to his artistic position, it is impossible for us in the entire absence of direct evidence to do more than repeat the opinion of ancient critics, as retailed by Pliny. He was universally placed in the very first rank among painters. His skilful drawing of outlines is especially praised, and many of his drawings on wood and parchment were preserved and highly valued by later painters for purposes of study. He first attained skill in making his figures appear to stand out from the background. His picture of Theseus adorned the Capitol in Rome. His other works, ...besides the obscene subjects with which he is said to have amused his leisure, are chiefly mythological groups. A picture of the Demos, the personified People of
Athens, is famous; according to the story, the twelve prominent characteristics of the people, though apparently quite inconsistent with each other, were distinctly expressed in this figure. The way in which this was accomplished is an insoluble riddle.
PARROT, according to Prof. Skeat (Etymol. Dictionary, p. 422), from the French Perrot or Pierrot, a proper name and the diminutive of Pierre the name given generally to a large and very natural group of Birds, which for more than a score of centuries have attracted attention, not only from their gaudy plumage, but, at first and chiefly, it would seem, from the readiness with which many of them learn to imitate the sounds they hear, repeating the words and even phrases of human speech with a fidelity that is often astonishing. It is said that no representation of any Parrot appears in Egyptian art, nor does any reference to a bird of the kind occur in the Bible, whence it has been concluded that neither painters nor writers had any knowledge of it. Aristotle is commonly supposed to be the first author who mentions a Parrot; but this is an error, for nearly a century earlier Ctesias in his Indica (cap. 3), under the name of βlττακoς (Bittacus), so neatly described a bird which could speak an “Indian” language—naturally, as he seems to have thought—or Greek—if it had been taught so to do—about as big as a Sparrow-Hawk (Hierax), with a purple face and a black beard, otherwise blue green (cyaneus) and vermilion in colour, so that there cannot be much risk in declaring that he must have had before him a male example of what is now commonly known as the Blossom-headed Parakeet, and to ornithologists as Palaeοrnis cyanocephalus, an inhabitant of many parts of India. Much ingenuity has been exercised in the endeavour to find the word whence this, and the later form of the Greek name, was derived, but to little or no purpose. After Ctesias comes Aristotle’s ψιττdκη (Psittace), which Sundevall supposes him to have described only from hearsay, a view that ...the present writer is inclined to think insufficiently supported. But this matters little, for there can be no doubt that the Indian conquests of Alexander were the means of making the Parrot better known in Europe, and it is in reference to this fact that another Eastern species of Palaeornis now bears the name of P. alexandri, though from the localities it inhabits it could hardly have had anything to do with the Macedonian hero. That Africa had Parrots does not seem to have been discovered by the ancients till long after, as Pliny tells us (vi. 29) that they were first met with beyond the limits of Upper Egypt by explorers employed by Nero. These birds, highly prized from the first, reprobated by the moralist, and celebrated by more than one classical poet, in the course of time were brought in great numbers to Rome, and ministered in various ways to the luxury of the age. Not only were they lodged in cages of tortoise-shell and ivory, with silver wires, but they were professedly esteemed as delicacies for the table, and one emperor is said to have fed his lions upon them! But there would be little use in dwelling longer on these topics. With the decline of the Roman empire the demand for Parrots in Europe lessened, and so the supply dwindled, yet all knowledge of them was not wholly lost, and they are occasionally mentioned by one writer or another until in the 15th century began that career of geographical discovery which has since proceeded uninterruptedly. This immediately brought with it the knowledge of many more forms of these birds than had ever before been seen, for whatever races of men were visited by European navigators—whether in the East Indies or the West, whether in Africa or in the islands of the . Pacific—it was almost invariably found that even the most savage tribes had tamed some kind of Parrot; and, moreover, experience soon showed that no bird was more easily kept alive on board ship and brought home, while, if it had not the merit of “speech,” it was almost certain to be of beautiful plumage. Yet so numerous is the group that even now new species of Parrots are not uncommonly recognized, though, looking to the way in which the most secluded parts of the world are being ransacked, we must soon come to an end of this.
The home of the vast majority of Parrot-forms is unquestionably within the tropics, but the popular belief that Parrots are tropical birds only is a great mistake. In North America the Carolina Parakeet, Conurus carolinensis, at the beginning of the present century used to range in summer as high as the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario— a latitude equal to that of the south of France; and even within the last forty years it reached, according to trustworthy information, the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi, though now its limits have been so much curtailed that its occurrence in any but the Gulf States is doubtful. In South America, at least four species of Parrots are found in Chili or La Plata, and one, Conurus patagonus, is pretty common on the bleak coast of the Strait of Magellan. In Africa, it is true that no species is known to extend to within some ten degrees of the tropic of Cancer; but Pionias robustus inhabits territories lying quite as far to the southward of the tropic of Capricorn. In India the northern range of the group is only bounded by the slopes of the Himalaya, and further to the eastward Parrots are not only abundant over the whole of the Malay Archipelago, as well as Australia and Tasmania, but two very well-defined Families are peculiar to New Zealand and its adjacent islands (see Kak apo, vol. xiii. p. 825; and Nestor, vol. xvii. p. 354). No Parrot has recently inhabited the Palaearctic Region and but one (the Conurus carolinensis, just mentioned) probably belongs to the Nearctic; nor are Parrots represented by many different forms in either the Ethiopian or the Indian Regions. In continental Asia the distribution of Parrots is rather remarkable. None extend further to the westward than the valley of the Indus, which, considering the nature of the country in Baluchistan and Afghanistan, is perhaps intelligible enough: but it is not so easy to under stand why none are found either in Cochin China or China proper; and they are also wanting in the Philippine Islands, which is the more remarkable and instructive when we find how abundant they are in the groups a little further to the southward. Indeed Air Wallace has well remarked that the portion of the earth’s surface which contains the largest number of Parrots, in proportion to its area, is undoubtedly that covered by the islands extending from Celebes to the Solomon group. “The area of these islands is probably not one-fifteenth of that of the four tropical regions, yet they contain from one-fifth to onefourth of all the known Parrots” (Geogr. Distr. Animals, ii. p. 330). He goes on to observe also that in this area are found many of the most remarkable forms—all the red Lories, the great black Cockatoos, the pigmy Nasi-ternae, and other singularities. In South America the species of Parrots, though numerically nearly as abundant, are far less diversified in form, and all of them seem capable of being referred to two or, at most, three sections. The species that has the widest range, and that by far, is the common Ring-necked Parakeet, Palaeornis torquatus, a well-known cage-bird which is found from the mouth of the Gambia across Africa to the coast of the Red Sea, as well as throughout the whole of India, Ceylon, and Burmah to Tenasserim. On the other hand there are plenty of cases of Parrots which are restricted to an extremely small area—often an island of insignificant size, as Conurus xantholaemus, confined to the island of St Thomas in the Antilles, and Palaeornis exsul to that of Rodriguez in the Indian Ocean—to say nothing of the remarkable instance of Nestor productus before mentioned (vol. xvii. p. 355).
The systematic treatment of this very natural group of birds has long been a subject of much difficulty, and the difference of opinion among those who have made it their study is most striking, for there is hardly an approach to unanimity to be found, beyond the somewhat general belief which has grown up within the last forty years that the Parrots should be regarded as forming a distinct Order of the Class, though there are some men, justly accounted authorities, who even question this much. A few systematists, among whom Bonaparte was chief, placed them at the top of the Class, conceiving that they were the analogues of the Primates among mammals. Prof. Huxley has recognized the Psittacomorphae as forming 'one of the principal groups of Carinate birds, and, by whatever name we call them, that much seems to be evident. It will here, however, be unnecessary to discuss the exact rank which the Parrots as a group should hold, for sufficient on that score has already been said above (Ornithology, p. 47), and it is quite enough of a task to consider the most natural or—if we cannot hope at present to reach that—at least the most expedient way of subdividing them. It must be admitted as a reproach to ornithologists that so little satisfactory progress has been made in this direction, for of that the existing differences of opinion—differences as wide as have ever existed in any branch of ornithic taxonomy—are sufficient proof. Moreover, the result is all the more disheartening, seeing that there is no group of exotic birds that affords equal opportunities for anatomical examination, since almost every genus extant, and more than two-thirds of the species, have within recent times been kept in confinement in one or another of our zoological gardens, and at their death have furnished subi ects for dissection. Y et the laudable attempt of Μ. Blanchard {Comptes Rendus, xliii. 1097-1100 and xliv. 518-521) has not been regarded as successful, and it cannot be affirmed positively that the latest arrangement of the Psittaci is really much more natural than that planned by Buffon one hundred and twenty years ago. He was of course unaware of the existence of some of the most remarkable forms of the group, in particular of St rig ops and Nestor·, but he began by making two great divisions of those that he did know, separating the Parrots of the Old World from the Parrots of the New, and subdividing each of these divisions into various sections somewhat in accordance with the names they had received in popular language—a practice he followed on many other occasions, for it seems to have been with him a belief that there is more truth in the discrimination· of the unlearned than the scientific are apt to allow. The result is that he produced a plan which is comparatively simple and certainly practical, while as just stated it cannot be confidently declared to be unnatural. However, not to go so far back as twenty years, in 1867-68 Dr Finsch published at Leyden an elaborate monograph of the Parrots, regarding them as a Family, in which he admitted 26 genera, forming 5 Subfamilies:—(1) that composed of Strigops (Kakapo, ut supr.) only; (2) that containing the crested forms or Cockatoos; (3) one which he named Sittacinae, comprising all the long-tailed species—a somewhat heterogeneous assemblage, made up of Macaws (vol. xv. p. 130) and what are commonly known as Parakeets; (4) the Parrots proper with short tails; and (5) the so-called “brush-tongued” Parrots, consisting of the Lories (vol. xv. p. 7) and Nestors (ut sup.). Except in the characters of the last group he recognized none that were not external, and that fact is sufficient to cast suspicion on his scheme being natural.
In 1874 the late Prof. Garrod communicated to the Zoological Society the results of his dissection of examples of 82 species of Parrots, which had lived in its gardens, and these results were published in its Proceedings for that year (pp. 586-598, pls. 70, 71). The principal points to which he attended were the arrangement of the carotid artery, and the presence or absence of an ambiens muscle, an oil-gland, and a furcula; but except as regards the last character he unfortunately almost wholly neglected the rest of the skeleton, looking upon such osteological features as the formation of an orbital ring and peculiarities of the atlas as “of minor importance ”—an estimate to which nearly every anatomist will demur; for, though undoubtedly the characters afforded by blood-vessels and muscles are useful in default of osteological characters, it is obvious that these last, drawn from the very framework of any vertebrate’s structure, cannot be inferior in value to the former. Indeed the investigations of Prof. A. Milne-Edwards (Ann. Sc. Nat. Zoologie, ser. 5, vi. pp. 91-111; viii. pp. 145-156) on the bones of the head in various Psittacine forms make it clear that these alone present features of much significance, and if his investigations had not been carried on for a special object, but had been extended to other parts of the skeleton, there is little doubt that they would have removed some of the greatest difficulties. The one osteological character to which Garrod trusted, namely, the condition of the furcula, cannot be said to contribute much towards a safe basis of classification. That it is wholly absent in some genera of Parrots had long been known, but its imperfect ossification, it appears, is not attended in some cases by any diminution of volant powers, which tends to shew that it is an unimportant character, an inference confirmed by the fact that it is found wanting in genera placed geographically so far apart that the loss must have had in some of them an independent origin. Summarilv expressed, Garrod’s scheme was to divide the Parrots into two Families, Palaeornithidae and Psittacidae, assigning to the former three Subfamilies Palaeornithinae, Cacatuinae, and String opinae, and to the latter four, Arinae, Pyrrhurvnae, Platycercinae, and Chrysotinae. That each of these sections, except the Cacatuinae, is artificial any regard to osteology would shew, and it would be useless here to further criticize his method, except to say that its greatest merit is that, as before mentioned (Love-Bird, vol. xv. p. 28), he gave sufficient reasons for distinguishing between the genera Agapornis and Psittacula. In the Journal für Ornithologie for 1881 Dr Reichenow published a Conspectus Psittacorum, founded, as several others have been, on external characters only. He makes 9 Families of the group, and recognizes 45 genera, and 442 species, besides subspecies. His grouping is generally very different from Garrod’s, but displays as much artificiality; for instance, Nestor is referred to the Family which is otherwise composed of the Cockatoos. Still more recently we have the arrangement followed by Mr Sclater in the List of those exhibited of late years in the gardens of the Zoological Society, and published in 1883. This is more in accordance with the views that the present writer is inclined to hold, and these views may here, though with much diffidence, be stated. First there is Strigops, which must stand alone, unless, as before hinted (vol. xiii. p. 826), Geopsittacus and Pezoporus may have to be placed with it in a Family Strigopidae. Next Nestor, from its osteological peculiarities, seems to form a very separate type, and represents a second Family Nestoridae. These two Families being removed, all the Parrots that remain will be found to have a great resemblance among themselves, and perhaps it is impossible justifiably to establish any more Families. For the present at any rate it would seem advisable to keep them in a single Family Psittacidae, but there can be no objection to separating them into several Subfamilies. The Cockatoos, for instance, can be without much difficulty defined, and may stand as Cacatuinae, and then the brush-tongued Lories as Lorünae, after which the Macaws, Arinae— including possibly Conurus and its allies. Platycercus and its neighbours may form another section, and the same with Palaeornis·, but for the rest there is not yet material for arriving at any determination, though Chrysotis and Psittacus seem to furnish two different types, to the former of which Psittacula appears to bear much the same relation as Agapornis does to the latter. Amongst the genera Chrysotis, Palaeornis, and Psittacus are probably to be found the most highly organized forms, and it is these birds in which the faculty of so-called “speech” reaches its maximum development. But too much importance must not be assigned to that fact; since, while Psittacus erithacus— the well-known Grey Parrot with a red tail—is the most accomplished spokesman of the whole group, it is fairly approached by some species of Chrysotis —usually styled Amazons—and yet its congener P. timneh is not known to be at all loquacious.
Considering the abundance of Parrots both as species and individuals, and their wide extent over the globe, it is surprising how little is known of their habits in a wild state. Even the species with which Englishmen and their descendants have been more in contact than any other has an almost unwritten history, compared with that of many other birds; and, seeing how it is oppressed by and yielding to man’s occupation of its ancient haunts, the extirpation of the Carolina Parakeet is certain, and will probably be accomplished before several interesting and some disputed points in its economy have been decided. The same fate possibly awaits several of the Australian species and all those in New Zealand—indeed the experience of small islands only foreshadows what will happen in tracts of greater extent, though there more time is required to produce the same result; but, the result being inevitable, those who are favourably placed for observations should neglect no opportunities of making them ere it be too late. (a. N.)
PARROT-FISHES, more correctly called Parrot- Wrasses, are marine fishes, belonging to the Wrasse family, and referred to four closely-allied genera, viz., Scarus, Scarùhthys, Callyodon, and Pseudoscarus. They are easily recognized by their large scales, of which there are from twenty-one to twenty-five in the lateral line, by having invariably nine spines and ten rays in the dorsal fin and two spines with eight rays in the anal, and especially by their singular dentition, of jaws as well as pharynx. The teeth of the jaws are soldered together, and form a sharp-edged beak similar to that of a parrot, but without a middle projecting point, and the upper and lower beak are divided into two lateral halves by a median suture. In a few species the single teeth can be still distinguished, but in the majority {Pseudoscarus) they are united into a homogeneous substance with polished surface. By this sharp and hard beak parrot-fishes are enabled to bite or scrape off those parts of coral-stocks which contain the animalcules, or to cut off branches of tough fucus, which in some of the species forms the principal portion of their diet. The process of triturating the food is performed by the pharyngeal teeth, which likewise are united, and form plates with broad masticatory surface, not unlike the grinding surface of the molars of the elephant. Of these plates there is one pair above, opposed to and fitting into the single one which is coalesced to the lower pharyngeal bone. The contents of the alimentary canal, which are always found to be finely divided and reduced to a pulp, prove the efficiency of this triturating apparatus; in fact, ever since the time of Aristotle it has been maintained that the Scarus ruminates. Nearly one hundred species of parrot-fishes are known from the ...tropical and subtropical parts of the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Oceans; like other coral-feeding fishes, they are absent on the Pacific coasts of tropical America and on the coast of tropical West Africa. The most celebrated is the Scarus of the Mediterranean. Beautiful colours prevail in this group of wrasses, but are subject to great changes and variation in the same species; almost all are evanescent, and cannot be preserved after death. The majority of parrot-fishes are eatable, some even esteemed; but they (especially the carnivorous kinds) not unfrequently acquire poisonous properties after they have fed on corals or medusae containing an acrid poison. Many attain to a considerable size, upwards of 3 feet in length.
