116 MEALY AMAZON. 



down, or swelling upland. The thistle seed is wafted past his prison 

 bars — cloud, sun, and gale play upon it. The passionate desire for 

 freedom swells the breast of the unhappy captive, which at this moment 

 hears the joyous twittering of an approaching flight. What wonder 

 that it sends forth a piercing note of appeal, or that its agitation 

 attracts the attention of its fellows on the wing?" 



What wonder indeed ? but as long as the actions and voices of birds, 

 whether they be Redpolls, Linnets, or Mealy Amazons, are considered 

 solely from the human point of view; so long will they be liable to 

 more or less ludicrous misrepresentation. 



The same writer, whose true interpretation of the " call-birds' " notes 

 we have just quoted, further remarks in another place, " Superstitions 

 regarding the articulate speech of birds were once widely prevalent 

 among the Oriental nations, and were fully shared by the aborigines 

 of the New World. From this stock has sprung an entirely false 

 estimate of the so-called powers of speech supposed to be possessed 

 by certain birds above others. Imitative speech is not speech at all, 

 but mere jargon caught up and reproduced by some fowls gifted with 

 the faculty of mimicry. These over-praised orators never really talk 

 less than when giving solemn utterance to some phrase or trick 

 of human speech; their efforts have import only to the human ear. 

 They are purely mechanical and accidental, and afford no basis of 

 understanding among the birds themselves." 



This conclusion, nevertheless, appears to us to be a little overstrained ; 

 the possession of human speech once, we know, saved the life of a tame 

 Piping Crow that had wandered from its master's house into a newly 

 ploughed field, where a number of its congeners were engaged in 

 picking up the various grubs that had been dislodged from their 

 accustomed haunts ; and as soon as these wild Crows saw the tame 

 one, they surrounded and attacked it, when the latter began to volubly 

 repeat its whole not very choice repertory of " colonial " phrases, which 

 had the effect of putting its adversaries to immediate flight; whereupon 

 the tame bird returned in triumph to the farmhouse, where it began 

 to pipe lustily the tune of "There's nae guid luck aboot the house", 

 which, under the circumstances, was perhaps the most unsuitable melody 

 it could have selected. 



From our point of view the actions of birds are no less ridiculous 

 than their mode of expressing themselves in certain contingencies ; for 

 example, two Mealy Amazons, one of which is combing the other's 

 head, or feeding it with half-digested food disgorged for the purpose, 

 are at once absurd and disgusting; but if we put ourselves out of 

 the question for the moment, and consider the same actions from the 



