December 12, 1901] 



NA TURE 



iiy 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Ediloi- does no/ hold himself rcsponsibk for opinions ex- 

 picsvd by his (onespondeiits. Neither can he undertake 

 lo return, or to em respond with the writers of, rejeeiei 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NaTUKE. 

 No notice is taien of anonymous communications.'i 



Histrionic Capacity of Grey Parrots. 



The capacity of the grey parrot for repeating words and 

 sentences of human language and for imitating ihe cries and 

 sounds made by other animals, both beasts and birds, is well 

 known. The remarkable aptitude which this parrot shows for 

 "saying tjie right thing at the right time" is also, I believe, 

 well known to those who have been familiar with intelligent 

 specimens of the bird. But I was not, until recently, aware 

 that the bird can be not only an excellent mimic but also -a good 

 actor ; and it is possible that some of your readers may be able 

 to give other instances of what I now propose, with your 

 permission, to relate. 



My daughter had a very clever young grey parrot, which, un- 

 fortunately, died on the first of this month, after a severe illness 

 of three weeks' duration. He was brought to my daughter 

 straight from the nest in Africa, and had he lived another month 

 would have been about two years old. He was a singularly 

 clever bird, artd of a charming disposition to his friends, though 

 very shy and inclined to be hostile to strangers. He was an 

 exceptionally good talker for his age, and showed remarkable 

 intelligence in fitting his sayings to the occasion. He was very 

 fond both of fruit and sugar, but I never knew him ask for sugar 

 at dinner or for apple at breakfast. For nuts, which were kept 

 in a cupboard in the room, he would ask at any time ; and in 

 many similar ways he showed a vivid association between the 

 words and the things represented by them. 



But the remarkable, and to me novel, power which he dis- 

 played at so young an age was that of acting. He played with 

 a bit of wood exactly as a clever little girl plays with her doll. 

 For example, he would take the wood in his claw and would say 

 to it, imitating the voice and gestures of my daughter or of one 

 of the servants, " What ! are you going to bite me ? How dare 

 you ? I will take the stick to you ! " Then he would shake 

 his head at the wood and say, " I am ashamed of you ! Whom 

 did you bite ? Go on your perch ! " Then he would take the 

 wood to the bottom of his cage, and putting it down on the floor 

 would hit it with his claw several times, saying, " Naughty ! 

 I'll cover you up, I will !'' Then he would step back from it 

 one or two paces, put his head on one side and say, as he looked 

 at it, " Are you good now ? " 



No attempt was ever made, deliberately, to teach him this or 

 any other of his histrionic performances. He picked them up 

 spontaneously from his own observation and memory. 



It would interest me much to know whether this capacity for 

 acting is often found in grey parrots. D. R. Fearon. 



The Athenaeum, Pall Mall, S.W. 



Use of the Arms in Locomotion. 



I CANNOT help feeling a special interest in the two letters 

 appearing at pages So and 102 of Nature. Let anyone stand 

 on a table and jump down, he will find that he throws up the 

 arms to lighten the fall. Let him go quickly up or down 

 stairs and see what use he will then make of his arms. 



When I was a small boy, brought up in the country, the 

 motions of the body indicated in these letters were natural ones 

 to me and my brothers and sister. But as I got older I went to 

 school, and at twelve years of age had to join a cadet corps. 



Then were the natural movements drilled out of me ; the 

 body had always to be square to the front, the arms motionless 

 by the sides. We were exercised on the flat, and one regulation 

 quick step was practised, having one length of pace, one of 

 time and one in stiffness. 



At seventeen I went to the Royal Military College at Sand- 

 hurst, where the same system was continued, but varied, I was 

 thankful to find, by an excellent gymnastic training. 



At eighteen I became an officer and remained as such for ten 

 years, when I retired. During the last four or five years of my 

 service I was adjutant of my regiment and taught the system I 

 have described. The British Army was indeed smart, it was 

 beautiful to look at, we rejoiced in it, we were proud of ourselves. 



Since my retirement in 1S78 soldiers are allowed to swing the 

 arms when marching and it is said that since the war in South 



NO. 1676, VOL. 65] 



Africa there are to be many real reforms. I shall believe in 

 them when I see them. 



At fifty-two years of age I find that in my daily walks or 

 mountain excursions, when I am walking (i) on the flat, (2) 

 uphill, or (3) downhill, then (i) the length of pace, (2) Ihe 

 time of each pace and (3) the attitude and movements of the 

 whole body must differ in each case, so as to ensure the best 

 work with the least possible fatigue, the least risk of falling, 

 overstrain or other mishap. There is an art in the performance 

 of what may seem to some the simplest actions of our lives, and 

 it is surprising what a man can do in climbing the hillside if he 

 knows the right way to set about it. 



'Ihe British soldier is not properly taught how to march, and 

 the war has abundantly shown that most of his drill is worse 

 than useless. 



In building a house it is usual to commence with a good found- 

 ation and finish with the roof. But what I read in the nevis- 

 pupers on oficially proposed Atmy reform is indeed painful to me. 

 I am a practical man and can assure you that if the British tax- 

 payer is going to be .satisfied with the creation of Army boards 

 and Army corps, and a far too large and costly staff — the roof of 

 the Army — and does not see to a solid foundation in a greatly 

 improved training of the individual soldier by the officers 

 immediately over him — i.e. company officers, who should be 

 properly paid for their work — and not adjutants and sergeant- 

 majors, he might just as well throw the millions he will be asked 

 to expend into the Atlantic Ocean. 



This is not usually the place for the discussion of Army matters, 

 and I must stop here, hoping you will consider that what I have 

 said fairly arises from the lead that has been given me. 



But I hope I may urge in conclusion that the arms should 

 be woiked habitually by all people, solders and civilians, men 

 and women. Medical men now recognise that in these days of 

 civilisation the leisured classes use the lower limbs far more than 

 the u pper ones and that the true way to cure many cases of weak 

 heart, lungs or digestion is to daily exercise the muscles of the 

 arms, shoulders and chest, the healthy action thus set up 

 strengthening the mternal organs of the body. Serious cases of 

 nervous disorder and brain trouble can often be successfully 

 combated with a judicious exercise of the arms under skilled 

 advice. 



The gist of the whole matter is this. Our lives have become 

 too fictitious ; we should go to the teachings of Nature and 

 endeavour to be natural. Giles A. Daubeny. 



Las Colondalles, Montreux, Switzerland, December 8. 



The Value of the Horns in Bighorn Wild Sheep as 

 Ear-trumpets. 



I.N the case of spiral-horned domestic sheep, as observed 

 chiefly in the Alps, the ear is as large as is usual in sheep, and 

 the horn (which grows homonymously, / e. the right horn has a 

 right spiral direction and the left a left) curls round the ear in 

 such a fashion that the ear caged in the open spiral is confined 

 to certain limits by the curves of the horn and lies in the long 

 axis of the open spiral of the horn, from which it only now and 

 then escapes by accident. 



An extraordinary difference is seen in the wild sheep, especially 

 to be noted in Ovis nivicola (for a figure and description vide 

 p. 214, vol. i., Guillemard's " Voyage of the Marchesa "). The 

 horns in this creature are enormous, but the ear is remarkably 

 short, though still situated exactly in the axis of the spiral and 

 in such a fashion that the ear appears to be at the apex of a 

 hollow cone formed by the great spiral horn. A similar con- 

 dition and relation of ear to horn is found in Ovis montana, the 

 Siberian argali, and others. The form of the horn and the 

 position of the ear enables the wild sheep to determine the direc- 

 tion of sounds when there is a mist or fog, the horn acting like 

 an Admiralty megaphone when used as an ear-trumpet, or like 

 the topophone (a double ear-trumpet, the bells of which open 

 opposite ways) used for a fog-bound ship on British-American 

 vessels to determine the direction of sound signals. 



By taking a horn off the skull the listening ear, if properly 

 placed, can distinguish the tick of a watch in one position best 

 in the axis of the coil, and thus test the value of the horn for 

 determining the direction of sounds — though no evidence of im- 

 proved hearing for distance could be discovered by any such 

 simple experiment. The functions suggested would be especially 

 of advantage to wild sheep when feeding on mountains in mist 

 and fog in making them more wary and difficult of approach. 



Cambridge, December 7. George Wherry. 



