268 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



to say the phrase, or, I should say, trying to learn it. It evi- 

 dently has the phrase somewhere in store, for eventually this 

 is uttered perfectly, but at first the attempts are very poor and 

 ludicrous. If the sentence be composed of a few words, the 

 first two or three are said over and over again, and then another 

 and another word added, until the sentence is complete, the 

 pronunciation at first being very imperfect, and then becoming 

 gradually more complete, until the task is accomplished. Thus 

 hour after hour will the bird be indefatigably working at the 

 sentence, and not until some days have elapsed will it be perfect. 

 The mode of acquiring it seems to me exactly what I have ob- 

 served in a child learning a French phrase; two or three 

 words are constantly repeated, and then others added, until the 

 whole is known, the pronunciation becoming more perfect as the 

 repetition goes on. I found also on whistling a popular air to 

 my parrot that she picked it up in the same way, taking note 

 by note until the whole twenty-five notes were complete. Then 

 the mode of forgetting, or the way in which phrases and airs 

 pass from its recollection, may be worth remarking. The last 

 words or notes are first forgotten, so that soon the sentence re- 

 mains unfinished or the air only half whistled through. The 

 first words are the best fixed in the memory ; these suggest 

 others which stand next to them, and so on till the last, which 

 have the least hold on the brain. These, however, as I have 

 before mentioned, can be easily revived on repetition. This is 

 also a very usual process in the human subject : for example, 

 an Englishman speaking French will, in his own country, if no 

 opportunity occur for Conversation, apparently forget it ; he no 

 sooner, however, crosses the Channel and hears the language 

 than it very soon comes back to him again. In trying to recall 

 poems learned in childhood or in school days, although at that 

 period hundreds of lines may have been known, it is found that 

 in manhood we remember only the two or three first lines of 

 the < Iliad,' the '^Eneid,' or the ' Paradise Lost.' 1 



The following is communicated to me by Mr. Venn, of 

 Cambridge, the well-known logician : 



I had a grey parrot, three or four years old, which had 

 been taken from its nest in West Africa by those through whom 

 I received it. It stood ordinarily by the window, where it could 

 equally hear the front and back door bells. In the yard, by the 

 back door, was a collie dog, who naturally barked violently at 

 nearly all the comers that way. The parrot took to imitating the 



1 Journal of Mental Science, July 1879. 



