table (there was no cloth on it) and ran round it several times,

every now and then emitting a curious little squeak. He was

wheeling a barrow one of my boys said, and the noise he every

now and then made reminded me of a revolving wheel, of which

the axle wanted greasing.


This, we afterwards found out, was a favourite trick of

Pinto, and was probably done with a view to rubbing down the

redundant portions of the lower mandible.


Pinto was perfectly tame, and talked a great deal in an

unknown tongue, one of the dialects, no doubt, of some native

Indian tribe on the Amazon, but his only English word was

“well,” and he never picked up another.


He had his likes and dislikes too, and was particularly

inimical to a lady visitor who often came to see us, but he never

attempted to bite, though evidently enjoying the fright he used

to put her into by pretending to run at her with all his feathers

bristled up, hissing vehemently the while, but Pinto’s bark was

much w T orse than his bite.


When I afterwards, several years afterwards, acquired

Joey, I noticed that there was a good deal of difference in the

appearance of the two birds, and that Pinto was somewdiat

smaller than my new acquisition, whose head, face, and pointed

nuchal feathers were creamy white, while our old friend had the

same parts of a dull or dingy grey.


Subsequently I ascertained that this was the sexual

difference, and that Joe} 7 was the gentleman and Pinto the lady.

I had a pair, and why not a little family of Hawkheads by

and bye ?


It is not well to count one’s chickens before they are

hatched, but we are all apt to do it, and prepare a disappointment

for ourselves, and I am no better than the rest.


The tw 7 o birds u 7 ere never very friendly, but they did not

exactly quarrel, and in time, perhaps—but I have reason to

believe that Pinto was advanced in years, and that Joey had

passed his first youth, but whether it was the thought of lost

opportunities, or jealousy of the new comer, I know not, but to our

great regret Pinto seemed to pine away, and, in a few months

after her introduction to Joe, passed to that bourne-.


Is it necessary to describe the plumage of those well-

known birds? I think not; a glance at the splendid portrait of

the August Amazon in the June number of our Magazine, and

a little draft upon the imagination, will give our members a



