C. c. carolinensis(Pictured) General plumage green, paler on underparts; forehead, lores, periophthalmic region and upper cheeks orange; remainder of head and upper part of neck yellow; scapulars, greater wing coverts and tertials tinged with olive and margined with greenish yellow; primary coverts deep green edged with yellowish green; outer webs of primaries basally marked with yellow; bend of wing, carpal edge, a nd thighs yellow; undersides of flight and tail feathers greyish; bill horn coloured; iris brown; legs flesh brown. Formerly found in south-eastern United States from Florida north to southern Virginia and occasionally as a visitor to Pennsylvania and possibly New York; now extinct.

C. c. ludovicianus Like carolinensis, but green of rump, lower hindneck, and sometimes the wing coverts decidedly more bluish; green of underparts less yellowish; greater wing coverts, inner secondaries, and basal sections of outer webs of primaries more extensively marked with brighter yellow. Formerly distributed throughout the Mississippi, Missouri drainage in the eastern interior of the United States from the Gulf of Mexico between eastern Texas and Mississippi, or possib ly western Alabama, north to the southern shores of the Great Lakes from western New York to southern Wisconsin and to eastern Colorado, southern Nebraska, and possibly to South and North Dakota; now extinct.

The complete story behind the disappearance of these parrots will never be known because documentation of their decline was sketchy. There seems little doubt that man and his effects on the environment were responsible, but the factors directly involved remain something of a mystery. Greenway point s out that during a period of about ninety years the range of Conuropsis gradually contracted from east to west, toward the Mississippi River, and the dates of final records from the various regions coincide well with the spread of settlement and the destru ction of forests. Persistent persecution and destruction of habitat are widely accepted as having been the direct causes of the extirpation of the parrots. However, McKinley (1966) says that it is almost too easy to say that they were such pests of frui t and grain crops that they were relentlessly exterminated. I agree that there were probably more subtle primary causes involved, and the species may have been a naturally declining one, but the importance of persecution as a secondary pressure on the species should not be under-rated.