CORRESPONDENCE. 



121 



ARE ANIMALS LEFT-HANDED? 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



IN The Popular Science Monthly for 

 March, 1894, page 615, Prof. J. Mark Bald- 

 win says, in a footnote : " I know only the 

 assertion of Vierordt that parrots grasp and 

 hold food with the left claw, that lions strike 

 with the left paw, and his quotation from 

 Livingstone i. e., 'All animals are left- 

 handed.' (Vierordt, loc. cit., page 428.) Dr. 

 W. Ogle reports observations on parrots and 

 monkeys in Trans. Royal Med. and Chirur. 

 Society, 1871." 



I have tried to verify these observations 

 on two parrots lately brought from Mexico. 

 I find that in grasping a finger offered as a 

 perch the parrots almost always put the left 

 foot forward. Usually the finger thus of- 

 fered is that of the right hand. But when 

 the left finger is offered to the parrots they 

 put forward the right foot. There is, how- 

 ever, apparently a small residuum of prefer- 

 ence for the left foot. This seems to be due 

 to the fact that men are usually right-handed 

 and offer the right hand to the parrot. The 

 left foot is the one naturally put forward by 

 the parrot in this case, and through repeti- 

 tion of this action a species of left-footed- 

 ness is induced. My general conclusion is 

 that there is no evidence that the parrot is 

 naturally left-footed. The appearance of 

 left-footedness is due entirely to the fact 

 that those who offer the finger or food to 

 parrots do so as a rule with the right hand. 

 Repetition of this process makes the parrot 

 more or less left-footed in time. 



DAVID S. JORDAN. 

 PALO ALTO, CAT., May 16, 1895. 



IMITATIVE HABITS OF THE BLUE 

 JAY. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly: 



SIR: In reading Variation in the Hab- 

 its of Animals, I see the author is not in 

 line with The Study of Birds Out-of-doors, 

 or she would not have written, " The prac- 

 tice of mocking the hawk is, at present at 

 least, confined, so far as I know, to the in- 

 dividuals of such limited area this one 

 town that with Mr. Ridgway we must be- 

 lieve this peculiarity exhibited by the blue 

 jay to be scarcely the ' manifestation of a 

 regional impress.' " 



My boyhood and early manhood were 

 spent in the country, in middle Tennessee, 

 where I had ample opportunity to observe 

 the habits and, I might say, peculiarities of 



certain birds. The blue jay not only mocks 

 the hawk, which I have heard him do hun- 

 dreds of times, but mocks also many other 

 birds. The catbird possesses this faculty 

 in a remarkable degree, and so rapidly does 

 he " change his tune " that if he was not 

 visible we should be apt to say, What a lovely 

 mocking bird you have singing in your apple 

 tree ! Don't again mistake the jay for a 

 hawk, for wherever you hear the jay he 

 mocks the hawk, redbird, and many of his 

 other neighbours. Yours truly, 



W. A. HOWARD, M. D. 

 WACO, TEXAS, September 7, 1895. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



DEAR SIR: I noticed in the September 

 Monthly, in the article, Variation in the Hab- 

 its of Animals, by G. C. Davenport, that the 

 writer speaks of the blue jay (Cyanuyps 

 cristata, or more recently Cyanocitta cristata) 

 as acquiring and using the cry of the hawk 

 in order to assist in the fight with Eng- 

 lish sparrows, and she seemed to imply that 

 it was an accomplishment of the blue jay in 

 that region only. I have heard in the wood- 

 ed lands of southeastern Indiana the blue 

 jay give a fairly good imitation of the shrill, 

 piercing, drawn-out cry of the large chicken 

 hawk (Buteo borealis) at different times for 

 as much as twenty years. I think this cry 

 has not been developed in this region, at 

 least, in the fight with recent enemies, but 

 rather that the blue jay robber and despoiler 

 that he is has now and then used this cry 

 to terrify smaller birds for untold years. 

 Yours truly, 



Prof. GLENN CULBERTSON. 



HANOVER COLLEGE, HANOVER, IND., 

 September 19, 1895. 



ORIGIN OF THE TERM AGNOSTIC. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



SIR: In the September Forum appears 

 an article on Prof. Huxley by Richard H. 

 Button, editor of The Spectator, in which, 

 on pages 27 and 28, he states that Prof. 

 Huxley " claimed to be in the strictest sense 

 an Agnostic," and further states that Prof. 

 Huxley borrowed that term from an " inci- 

 dent related in the Acts of the Apostles," 

 where reference is made to the fact that the 

 Athenians had erected an altar " Agnosto 

 Theo " to the Unknown God. Is not Mr. 

 Hutton mistaken in regard to the origin of 

 this term ? In a letter written to Mr. J. A. 

 Skilton, December 10, 1889, and published in 



