164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a pailful of cold water. The specific answered its purpose, and one 

 rainy day the parrot was sitting in the open kitchen-window, watching 

 the events of the back yard, where he espied a number of drenched 

 chickens, picking their way across the slippery pavement. "Poor 

 things ! " said Polly, and then in an undertone, as the chickens ap- 

 proached the house — "Look here, you've been swearing, haven't 

 you ? " This probable story made the rounds of the American press, 

 and is a fair sample of hundreds of similar myths. The truth is, that 

 the wisest parrot ever shipped from Para to New York does not con- 

 nect the slightest meaning with the best-remembered word of his 

 vocabulary. Properly speaking, elocutionary birds do not talk at all. 

 They only repeat. They rehearse phrases as they would rehearse a 

 tune, and one might as well credit a telephone with the ability of 

 originating a logical combination of words. If profanity is a sin, 

 swearing parrots will be forgiven, because they know not what they 

 do ; but their jokes are equally unintended. A phrase, repeated a 

 thousand times a day, can not, of course, be used always malapropos, 

 but the rarity of the exceptions confirms the rule as decidedly as the 

 lucid interval of a Salvation Army dragoon. In one of Anderson's 

 fairy -talcs, the night wind tries to reveal a secret to a man who happens 

 to understand only the dialect of his native village, and thus hears 

 nothing but the whistling of the reeds and the rustling of the leaves ; 

 and in the wisest human speech poor Poll hears only the hooting of 

 vowels and the clacking of consonants. 



The serpent-charm superstition, too, still holds its own, though a 

 recent communication to the " Scientific American " seems to imply 

 that at least one common-sense explanation of the phenomenon begins 

 to elucidate the fog of mysticism. The writer, evidently a practical 

 naturalist, suggests that the apparent infatuation of " charmed " birds 

 may be nothing but the heroism of maternal affection, overcoming the 

 instinct of self-preservation. That inference may not rarely hold good 

 in the spring-time of our northern woodlands, but squirrels and lizards, 

 as well as birds, are charmed, and in October as often as in May ; and 

 the champions of the wizard-theory might at any time test the matter 

 by a simple experiment. Venomous serpents are the most sluggish of 

 all reptiles (compare " Popular Science Monthly," September, 1879), 

 and, with a bag-net fastened to a ring and tied to the end of a long 

 stick, a rattlesnake can be captured more easily than a butterfly. 

 Quarter your captive in a convenient out-house and let him starve for a 

 couple of days. Then procure a lot of rats, or good-sized mice, such 

 as every mill-boy is ready to deliver for a dime a dozen. Do not in- 

 troduce them all at once, but successively, and fastened to a string at 

 the end of a stick. The apathy of the snake can be broken by making 

 the mouse scamper in tempting proximity to his fangs. Give the 

 poison time to operate, and watch the conduct of the victims ; but ob- 

 serve the precaution of removing them just as the serpent approaches 



