BIRDS AND MEN 155 



and do all sorts of funny things. The outer kitchen door 

 opened up a few steps into the garden, and food was often 

 placed in a saucer at the top of the steps. We did not 

 understand why the saucers were so often broken, until 

 one day when in the garden, near by, my wife heard a 

 scraping noise, and looking round saw Master Jack push- 

 ing the empty saucer along the top step. When close 

 to the edge the rascal gave one final shove and then 

 popped his head quickly over to see the saucer break 

 three feet below. On another occasion, when gardening, 

 my wife placed her white starched cuffs on a pedestal 

 and forgot them. An hour afterwards they were found 

 on the kitchen floor. Jack had espied them on the 

 pedestal, had carried them to the top of the steps, and 

 dropped them over to see them break ! We had a pet 

 dog of whom Jack did not seem to take much notice ; but 

 one afternoon in the summer-house, when my wife was 

 having a rough and tumble bit of fun with the dog, Jack 

 uttered his peculiar raucous cry and attacked my wife 

 vigorously for what he thought was her bad treatment of 

 the dog. This was repeated afterwards as an experiment 

 with the same result. 



When Jack was about eighteen months old we were 

 surprised to hear him trying to speak English to us. 

 This developed into the words ' ' Come on ! " as clearly 

 as we spoke them ourselves. These words had often been 

 used to him and to the little dog in his hearing. Then we 

 tried to teach more, but he never got beyond the exclama- 

 tion ' ' Hello ! ' ' uttered in the softest of tones. It was 

 exceedingly comical sometimes, when pretending to have 

 a pitched battle with him in the garden, to see him dodge 

 behind a stone and out again, saying "Hello!" in the 

 quaintest of voices. By giving a certain whistle I could 

 always elicit from him a vigorous " Come on," and 

 when carrying him on his back in my hand with his feet 

 in the air, he would sometimes challenge me to " Come 

 on !" just as if he were the top dog and I were not. The 



