342 
ANIMALS OF EGA. 
Chap. V, 
therefore I need not describe them in detail, but I do 
not recollect to have seen any notice of their intelligence 
and confiding disposition under domestication, in which 
qualities my pet seemed to be almost equal to parrots. 
I allowed Tocano to go free about the house, contrary to 
my usual practice with pet animals ; he never, however, 
mounted my working-table after a smart correction 
which he received the first time he did so. He used to 
sleep on the top of a box in a corner of the room, in the 
usual position of these birds, namely, with the long tail 
laid right over on the back, and the beak thrust under- 
neath the wing. He ate of everything that we eat ; beef, 
turtle, fish, farinha, fruit, and was a constant attendant 
at our table — a cloth spread on a mat. His appetite 
was most ravenous, and his powers of digestion quite 
wonderful. He got to know the meal hours to a nicety, 
and we found it very difiicult, after the first week or two, 
to keep him away from the dining-room, where he had 
become very impudent and troublesome. We tried to 
shut him out by enclosing him in the back-yard, which 
was separated by a high fence from the street on which 
our front door opened, but he used to climb the fence 
and hop round by a long circuit to the dining-room, 
making his appearance with the greatest punctuality 
as the meal was placed on the table. He acquired the 
habit, afterwards, of rambling about the street near our 
house, and one day he was stolen, so we gave him up 
for lost. But, two days afterwards, he stepped through 
the open doorway at dinner hour, with his old gait, 
and sly, magpie-like expression, having escaped from 
the house where he had been guarded by the person who 
