[August, 
[_y6 Thoughts on Imitation. 
Immediately Homo sapiens dismisses the whole matter with a 
curt, “ Ah, only imitation.” Here Homo sapiens doubtless 
forgets that his own vaunted faculty of speech according 
to Professor Max Muller and others the Rubicon between 
man and “ brute ” — is merely, as we shall find below, an 
outcome of this same propensity. 
But do we ever ask ourselves what the power ot imitation 
involves ? Let us take the common case of a parrot 
imitating human speech : what faculties must the bird 
possess and exercise before such imitation is possible ? . In 
the first place there must be close and accurate observation. 
The bird must distinguish with great nicety the sounds 
which she hears, including, not merely the effedt of the 
different letters, but all the peculiarities of the speaker s 
voice, as loud or soft, high or low, gruff or smooth, with all 
the minutiae of accent and pronunciation in which one 
speaker differs from another. So close is the reproduction 
that a parrot brought up in “ society” may be at once dis- 
tinguished from its fellow which has received a tavein 
education, even when uttering the very same words. 
I need scarcely say that we have here full proof, not alone 
of close and accurate observation, but of attention. The bird 
evidently concentrates its mind upon the sounds heard. 
Another faculty which “mere imitation” implies is 
memory. A parrot or magpie, or other talking bird, when 
it has once mastered a word or phrase, will letain it foi 
years. We must even admit in these birds, as in ourselves, 
the existence of latent inemovy. A parrot may cease to uttei 
some speech, and judging from analogy may have forgotten 
it. Suddenly, without any outward cause, or at least with- 
out again hearing the words, they return to her mind, and 
are again uttered. Of this I have had a veiy decisive in- 
stance : My parrot, a fresh arrival from the Gold Coast, and 
only beginning her education, heard some words uttered in 
the Norsk language by a little grandson of mine who 
was over on a visit from Norway. She caught up the words, 
repeated them for a few days, and then apparently forgot 
them. Suddenly, some fourteen months afterwards, she 
surprised me by bringing out the very same Norsk words, 
which she had certainly never heard in the meantime. 
But verbal imitation implies something much more than 
verbal memory. The words uttered are connected with 
objedts and events seen or taking place at the time when the 
words were first heard. This is proved by the familiar fadt 
that parrots, magpies, ravens, &c., learn to connedt names 
