ABOUT PARROTS. 



Naturalists place the parrot group at 

 the head of bird creation. This is done, 

 not, of course, because parrots can talk, 

 but because they display, on the whole, 

 a greater amount of intelligence, of 

 cleverness and adaptability to circum- 

 stances than other birds, including even 

 their cunning rivals, the ravens and 

 the jackdaws. 



Itmay wellbeasked what are the causes 

 of the exceptionally high intelligence in 

 parrots. The answer which I suggest is 

 that an intimate connection exists 

 throughout the animal world between 

 mental development and the power of 

 grasping an object all round, so as to 

 know exactly its shape and its tactile 

 properties. The possession of an effec- 

 tive prehensile organ — a hand or its 

 equivalent — seems to be the first great 

 requisite for the evolution of a high or- 

 der of intellect. Man and the monkeys, 

 for example, have a pair of hands ; and 

 in their case one can see at a glance how 

 dependent is their intelligence upon these 

 grasping organs. All human arts base 

 themselves ultimately upon the human 

 hand; and our nearest relatives, the an- 

 thropoid apes, approach humanity to 

 some extent by reason of their ever-active 

 and busy little fingers. The elephant, 

 again, has his flexible trunk, which, as 

 we have all heard over and over again, is 

 equally well adapted to pick up a pin or 

 to break the great boughs of tropical for- 

 est trees. The squirrel, also, remarkable 

 for his unusual intelligence when judged 

 by a rodent standard, uses his little paws 

 as hands by which he can grasp a nut or 

 fruit all round, and so gain in his small 

 mind a clear conception of its true shape 

 and properties. Throughout the animal 

 kingdom generally, indeed, this chain of 

 causation makes itself everywhere felt ; 

 no high intelligence without a highly-de- 

 veloped prehensile and grasping organ. 



Perhaps the opossum is the best and 

 most crucial instance that can be found 

 of the intimate connection which exists 



between touch and intellect. The opos- 

 sum is a marsupial ; it belongs to the same 

 group of lowly-organized, antiquated and 

 pouch-bearing animals as the kangaroo, 

 the wombat, and other Australian mam- 

 mals. Everybody knows that the mar- 

 supials, as a class, are preternaturally 

 dull — are perhaps the least intelligent of 

 all existing quadrupeds. And this is 

 reasonable when one considers the sub- 

 ject, for they represent a very early type, 

 the first ''rough sketch" of the mam- 

 malian idea, with brains unsharpened as 

 yet by contact with the world in the fierce 

 competition of the struggle for life as it 

 displays itself on the crowded stage of the 

 great continents. They stand, in fact, 

 to the lions and tigers, the elephants and 

 horses, the monkeys and squirrels of 

 America and Europe, as the native Aus- 

 tralian stands to the American or the 

 Englishman. They are the last relic of 

 the original secondary quadrupeds, 

 stranded for centuries on a Southern 

 island, and still keeping up among Aus- 

 tralian forests the antique type of life that 

 went out of fashion elsewhere a vast num- 

 ber of years ago. Hence they have brains 

 of poor quality, a fact amply demon- 

 strated by the kangaroo when one 

 watches his behavior in the zoological 

 gardens. 



Every high-school graduate is well 

 aware that the opossum, though it is a 

 marsupial, differs in psychological devel- 

 opment from the kangaroo and the wom- 

 bat. The opossum is active and hig-hly 

 intelligent. He knows his way about the 

 world in which he lives. "A 'possum up a 

 gum tree" is accepted by observant 

 minds as the very incarnation of animal 

 cunning and duplicity. In negro folk- 

 lore the resourceful 'possum takes the 

 place of the fox in European stories ; he 

 is the Macchiavelli of wild beasts ; there 

 is no ruse on earth of which he is not 

 amply capable ; and no wily manoeuvre 

 exists which he cannot carry to an end 

 successfully. All guile and intrigue, the 



