256 BIRDS AND MAN 



washerwomen outside the window. His host there- 

 upon threw up the bhnd and both looked out : no 

 Hving creature was there except a St Vincent parrot 

 dosing on his perch in the shaded verandah. " Ah, 

 I see, the parrot ! " said his friend. And he 

 apologised and explained that some of the niggers 

 had taken advantage of the bird's extraordinary 

 quickness in learning to teach him a lot of improper 

 stuff. 



Another parrot, which interested me more than 

 the St Vincent bird, was a member of the same 

 numerous genus, a double-fronted amazon, Chry- 

 sotis lavalainte, a larger bird, green with face and 

 fore-part of head pure yellow, and some crimson 

 colour in the wings and tail. I came upon it at an 

 inn, the Lamb, at Hindon, a village in the South 

 Wiltshire downs. One could plainly see that it 

 was a very old bird, and, judging from the ragged 

 state of its plumage, that it had long fallen into the 

 period of irregular or imperfect moult — " the sere, 

 the yellow leaf " in the bird's life. It also had the 

 tremor of the very aged — man or bird. But its 

 eyes were still as bright as polished yellow gems and 

 full of the almost uncanny parrot intelligence. The 

 voice, too, was loud and cheerful ; its call to its 

 mistress — " Mother, mother ! " would ring through 



