FACULTIES OF PARROTS. 



83 



First the charm'd mind mechanic powers collects, 

 Means for some end, and causes for effects ; 

 Then learns from other minds their joys and fears, 

 Contagious smiles and sympathetic tears. 



While we readily admit to animals a certain 

 extent of reasoning and reflecting powers, we see 

 that they are incapable of improving their race, from 

 their own experience and acquirements. Parrots are 

 only Parrots, as they were in the time of the Mace- 

 donian conqueror, without the slightest variation in 

 their mental acquirements ; but man has greatly 

 improved by the accumulated experience of past 

 ages. Generations do not pass away as if they had 

 never existed : their labours, knowledge, and expe- 

 rence, are inherited by posterity, and will so go on 

 accumulating knowledge and experience to the latest 

 moment of time. 



It is not to superior intelligence that we must 

 attribute the imitative qualities of Parrots, but to an 

 organic formation of the parts which produce the 

 voice, aided by an aptitude in their musical capacity. 

 For we find that the imitative propensities are not 

 confined to this tribe alone, but are possessed in an 

 inferior degree by Jays, Magpies, Starlings, and 

 Blackbirds: the Mocking-bird of America, and even 

 many of the smaller birds, have the faculty of 

 imitating human speech, — all to be attributed to 

 organic structure, rather than to superior intellectual 

 endowments. 



While we have thus endeavoured to dispossess 

 Parrots of any mental qualities, superior to those 



