434 REPTILES AND 



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 parrot 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 Leon, 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 

 Le'on ! " 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 : 

 " I 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 fable of the crow, and count thirty louis. They dared 

 scarcely hang its cage at the windows j for when it was there, and the 



