THE GRAY PARROT. 
391 
upper part of the breast there is a collar of yellow, and with this exception, the whole of the 
face, neck, back, breast, and abdomen are rich scarlet. The wings are green above, changing 
to violet on the edges and on the under wing-coverts. The feathers of the tail are rich scarlet 
at their base, and each feather is banded near its extremity with black, and tipped with yel- 
low. The feathers of the thigh are azure. The bill is yellow, with a tinge of orange, and is 
rather narrow towards the tip. In spite of its short tail, this bird measures about eleven 
inches in length, so that it is very much larger than the preceding species. 
The true Parrots constitute a group which are easily recognized by their short squared 
tails, the absence of any crest upon the head, and the toothed edges of the upper mandible. 
Many species belong to this group, of which we shall find three examples in the following 
pages. 
The Gteav P abbot has long been celebrated for its wonderful powers of imitation and its 
excellent memory. 
It is a native of Western Africa, and is one of the commonest inhabitants of our aviaries, 
being brought over in great 
numbers by sailors, and always 
finding a ready sale as soon as 
the vessel arrives in port. Un- 
fortunately the nautical vocabu- 
lary is none of the most refined, 
and the sailors have a malicious 
pleasure in teaching the birds to 
repeat some of the most start- 
ling of their phrases. The worst 
of the matter is, that the Par- 
rot’s memory is wonderfully te- 
nacious, and even after the lapse 
of years, and in spite of the most 
moral training, the bird is apt 
to break out suddenly with a 
string of very reprehensible ob- 
servations affecting the eyes, 
limbs, and general persons of his 
hearers. 
There is no doubt that the 
Parrot learns in coarse of time 
to attach some amount of mean- 
ing to the words which it repeats, 
for the instances of its apposite 
answers are too numerous and 
convincing not to prove that the 
bird knows the general sense of 
the phrase, if not the exact force gray PA RROT —Psittacus erithacm. 
of each word. 
I am unwilling to reproduce narratives which I have already published, and therefore 
restrict myself to one or two original anecdotes. 
There was a Parrot belonging to a friend of our family, a Portuguese gentleman. This 
Parrot was a great favorite in the house, and being accustomed equally to the company of its 
owner and the rest of the household, was familiar with Portuguese as well as English words 
and phrases. The bird evidently had the power of appreciating the distinction between the 
two languages, for if it were addressed, its reply would always be in the language employed. 
The bird learned a Portuguese song about itself and its manifold perfections, the words 
of which I cannot remember. But it would not sing this song if asked to do so in the 
