IN OTHER ANIMALS. 233 



proper time an exercise that implies a good deal more than 

 mere memory, mere attention to the service. They have 

 been taught, moreover, or they have learned, to repeat man's 

 creeds, to recite prayers, and even, or otherwise in a certain 

 sense, to act as domestic chaplains as substitutes, in other 

 words, for man himself. As in so many other cases, the 

 behaviour nay, the very speech the remarks or conversation 

 of the bird, are suitable to place, time, and other circum- 

 stances. Thus a certain English bishop's parrot is (or was) 

 in the habit of saying sometimes quite devoutly and with 

 becoming solemnity, at other times sarcastically or ironi- 

 cally, but in either case at proper seasons and appropriately 

 to the circumstances 'Let us pray.' Of another we are 

 told that it ' could sing in correct time and measure 



' There is a happy land.' 



