SLENDER-BILLED COCKATOO. 29 



"By the way", writes the correspondent to whom we referred above, 

 "neither you nor Mr. Gedney give the Slender-billed Cockatoo a good 

 character, and yet my 'Toby', who is, I believe, a 'Nosey', is the 

 dearest, funniest old fellow that ever lived! Only he does scream 

 sometimes, when he is either offended, or frightened, but then he talks. 

 When first I had him, he knew, I should think, about twenty sentences, 

 and never misapplied them; now he has become a greater mimic than 

 talker; daily he goes through the performance of pouring out tea. 

 The sugar is first put into the cups — the action of putting it in, you 

 understand — and then the tea is poured out; his beak being the spout 

 of the tea-pot, and he makes the noise of pouring exactly, while pre- 

 tending to do so. Yet no one is allowed to see all his funny little 

 doings, but his own home party; because, like all estimable characters, 

 Toby keeps the best for home. One morning', from an old ladder that 

 is devoted to his use in the garden, he watched the gardener clipping 

 the laurels, and when he came in, we had the whole performance of 

 clipping laurels gone through exactly, giving his head a little jerk with 

 each snap of the shears — his beak was of course supposed to be those 

 implements — and the sound was exact. Is it not Lady Brassey who 

 speaks of a Cockatoo of this sort in one of her books? a Cockatoo that 

 imitated actions of all kinds, could sew, and had the toothache, or was 

 supposed to have, putting up his 'hand', and rocking about, as he had 

 seen his mistress doing, when suffering from that disagreeable complaint. 

 I do not know whether it is general with all Cockatoos, but my Toby 

 likes almost everything served up warm. He eats and drinks very 

 nearly what we do, and it certainly seems to suit him, for no Cockatoo 

 could be in better health/' 



To the latter part of the above extremely interesting account of a 

 remarkable Cockatoo, we can but say that, to us, it seems injudicious 

 to feed one of these birds as described, and that the mixed diet given 

 to him without causing any deterioration in health, is due to the free 

 life he leads in our friend's garden. 



In a subsequent letter our correspondent, continuing her account of 

 "Toby", says: "One of his cleverest tricks I did not mention, it is 

 this: 'The children's hour' with us is Toby's hour, in which he is taken 

 out of his cage and petted, and played with. The striking of a match 

 to light the lamp is his signal for retiring. He has taken a fancy to 

 doing this, and as soon as the match-box appears, he strikes his match, 

 'Click! fizz!' and up goes his head, with the exact imitation of the 

 sound and action." 



Eeally such a bird is quite a phenomenon, and we shall have, in future, 

 much more respect for the abilities and capacity of the Slender-billed 



