434 REPTILES AND BIRDS. 
on the journey by an old sailor, learnt his rough voice and his cough 
so perfectly that he quite deceived his hearers. Although it had been 
given immediately after to a young person, and only heard his voice, 
it did not forget the lessons of its former master; and nothing was so 
agreeable as to hear it pass from a sweet and pleasant voice to its old 
hoarseness and the cough of early times.” 
Goldsmith relates that a partot belonging to King Henry VIII, 
and always confined in a chamber bordering upon the Thames, had 
learnt several phrases which it heard repeated by the boatmen and 
passengers. One day it was let fall into the Thames, when it cried 
with a strong voice, ‘‘A boat! a boat! twenty pounds to save me!” 
A waterman immediately threw himself into the river, thinking that 
some one was drowning, and was much surprised to find it was only 
a bird. Having recognised the king’s parrot, he carried it to the 
palace, claiming the recompense the bird had promised when in 
distress. The circumstance was related to Henry VIII., who laughed 
much, and paid it with a good grace. 
The Prince Léon, son of the Emperor Basil, having been 
condemned to death by his father, owed his life to his parrot, which, 
in repeating the lamentable accents several times, ‘‘ Alas ! my master 
Léon!” ended by touching, the heart of this barbarous father. -M. 
Lemaout says :—‘‘In a town of Normandy a butcher’s wife beat her 
child unmercifully every day. The infant sank under the ill-treatment. 
The justice of man made no remonstrance, but a grey parrot which ~ 
lived in the house of a rope-maker, opposite to that of the butcher, 
took upon itself the chastisement of this unnatural mother. It 
continually repeated the cries which the poor child uttered when he 
saw his mother rush at him with the rod in her hand—‘ What for ? 
what for?’ This phrase was uttered by the bird with such doleful 
and supplicating accents, that the indignant passers-by entered 
unexpectedly into the shop, and reproached the rope-maker with his 
barbarity. He justified himself by showing his parrot, and relating 
the history of his neighbour’s child. After some months the woman, 
pursued by the accusing phrase and the murmurs of public opinion, 
was obliged to sell her business and leave the village.” 
The “Marquis of Langle, in his “Travels in Spain,” writes thus :— 
“T saw at Madrid, at the English consul’s, a parrot which has retained 
a quantity of things—an incredible number of stories and anecdotes 
-—which it retails and articulates without hesitation. It spoke Spanish, 
murdered French, knew some verses of Racine, could say grace, 
repeat the fabie of the crow, and count thirty louis. They dared 
scarcely hang its cage at the windows ; for when it was there, and thie 
