APPENDIX. 
467 
c< P.S. — I sent this letter down to Ballymena. Mr. and Mrs. Gilion 
and Dr. Patrick assure me that the character given of Mr. Logan is 
perfectly correct ; the letter was read to him, and he adheres, in every 
particular, to his former statement. He does not agree with me, how- 
ever, in considering the robin to be easily tamed. The person who 
keeps Mr. Gihon’s gate (also a respectable person in her line of life) 
has observed the bird for nine years (ever since she came into her pre- 
sent post), and has no doubt of its identity for that length of time. 55 
I regard this information on the age of the robin as very interesting, 
from the circumstance that it is almost impossible to ascertain the age 
attained by birds in a state of nature. 
A blackbird, noticed in Yol. I., was kept alive in a cage for twenty 
or twenty-one years, and a caged goldfinch lived with a friend of mine 
for seventeen years ; its age when first obtained being unknown. It 
is common for the canary-finch to live at least twelve years in confine- 
ment, and a piping bullfinch, as mentioned at Yol. I. p. 265, was in 
the possession of a friend for about twenty years, when I made a note 
of the circumstance ; how much longer it lived I do not know, nor am 
I aware of its age when he obtained it. In Yol. II., a silver pheasant 
is mentioned as living in captivity for twenty-one or twenty-two years ; 
and in Yol. III., a pintail duck thirteen years on a pond, where it was 
at last wantonly killed. 
At an agricultural exhibition in Dungannon, a goose was exhibited 
a few years ago, on account of the honourable age it had attained. It 
has since died, aged forty-five years. 
A “ common green parrot, 55 brought to the north of Ireland about 
the time of the battle of Waterloo — 1815 — died in the winter of 1841$, 
having been at least thirty-three years old ; — its age when procured 
was not known. 
An old lady left by will to Charles Telfair, Esq., a gentleman 
honourably known in connexion with the Mauritius, a large sulphur- 
crested cockatoo ( Cacatua galerita ), after having it, as believed, about 
twenty-five years. It was a great pet with this gentleman for thirty- 
eight years, until his decease, after which it was brought by his niece 
to Belfast, and has now been here for nearly eighteen years. I went to 
see the bird in March 1846, when it was in the highest health, and 
I was told that for the fifty-one years at least, during which it had been 
in the possession of Mr. Telfair and its present owner, the cockatoo 
