PRETTY POLL. 89 



fact this power is but a very incidental result of the 

 general intelligence of parrots, combined with the other 

 peculiarities of their social life and forestine character. 

 Dominant woodland animals, indeed, like monkeys, 

 parrots, toucans, and hornbills, at least if vegetarian in 

 their habits, are almost always gregarious, noisy, 

 mischievous, and imitative. And the imitation results 

 directly from the unusual intelligence ; for, after all, 

 what is the power of learning itself at least, in all save 

 its very highest phases but the faculty of accurately 

 imitating another ? Monkeys for the most part imitate 

 action only, because they haven't very varied or flexible 

 voices. Parrots and many other birds, on the contrary 

 like the starling and still more markedly the American 

 mocking-bird being endowed with considerable flexi- 

 bility of voice, imitate either songs or spoken words with 

 great distinctness. In the parrot the power of attention 

 is also very considerable, for the bird will often try over 

 with itself repeatedly the lesson it has set itself to learn. 

 But people too generally forget that at best the parrot 

 knows only the general application of a sentence, not the 

 separate meanings of its component words. It knows, 

 for example, that ' Polly wants a lump of sugar ' is a 

 phrase often followed by a present of food. But to 

 believe it can understand an abstract expression, like the 

 famous ' By Jove ! what a beastly lot of parrots ! ' is to 

 confound learning by rote with genuine comprehension. 

 A careful review of all the evidence makes almost every 

 scientific observer conclude that at most a parrot knows a 

 word of command as a horse knows ' Whoa ! ' or a dog 

 knows the order to hunt for rats in the wainscot. 



