256 BIRDS AND MAN 



washerwomen outside the window. His host there- 

 upon threw up the blind and both looked out : no 

 living 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- 

 salis 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 



