262 BIRDS AND MAN 



recorded the greatest age to which a captive parrot 

 has been known to attain. This bird was the 

 familiar African grey species. He says that it began 

 to lose its memory at the age of sixty, to moult 

 irregularly at sixty-five, that it became blind at 

 ninety, and died aged ninety-three. 



We may well believe that if parrots are able to 

 exist for fifty years to a century in the unnatural 

 conditions in which they are kept, caged or chained 

 in houses, over-fed, without using their enormously- 

 developed wing-muscles, the constant exercise of 

 which must be necessary to perfect health and vigour, 

 their life in a state of nature must be twice as long. 



To return to parrots in general. This bird has 

 perhaps more points of interest for us than any 

 other of the entire class : his long life, unique form, 

 and brilliant colouring, extreme sociability, intelli- 

 gence beyond that of most birds, and, last, his 

 faculty of imitating human speech more perfectly 

 than the birds of other families. 



The last is to most persons the parrot's greatest 

 distinction ; to me it is his least. I do not find it so 

 wonderful as the imitative faculty of some mocking 

 birds or even of our delightful little marsh-warbler, 

 described in another book. This may be because I 

 have never had the good fortune to meet with a 



