268 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
to say the phrase, or, I should say, trying to learn it. It evi- 
dently has the phrase somewhere in store, for eventually this 
is uttered perfectly, but at first the attempts are very poor and 
ludicrous. If the sentence be composed of a few words, the 
first two or three are said over and over again, and then another 
and another word added, until the sentence is complete, the 
pronunciation at first being very imperfect, and then becoming 
gradually more complete, until the task is accomplished. Thus 
hour after hour will the bird be indefatigably working at the 
sentence, and not until some days have elapsed will it be perfect. 
The mode of acquiring it seems to me exactly what I have ob- 
served in a child learning a French phrase; two or three 
words are constantly repeated, and then others added, until the 
whole is known, the pronunciation becoming more perfect as the 
repetition goes on. I found also on whistling a popular air to 
my parrot that she picked it up in the same way, taking note 
by note until the whole twenty-five notes were complete. Then 
the mode of forgetting, or the way in which phrases and airs 
pass from its recollection, may be worth remarking* The last 
words or notes are first forgotten, so that soon the sentence re- 
mains unfinished or the air only half whistled through. The 
first words are the best fixed in the memory ; these suggest 
others which stand next to them, and so on till the last, which 
have the least hold on the brain. These, however, as I have 
before mentioned, can be easily revived on repetition. This is 
also a very usual process in the human subject : for example, 
an Englishman speaking French will, in his own country, if no 
opportunity occur for conversation, apparently forget it ; he no 
sooner, however, crosses the Channel and hears the language 
than it very soon comes back to him again. In trying to recall 
poems learned in childhood or in school days, although at that 
period hundreds of lines may have been known, it is found that 
in manhood we remember only the two or three first lines of 
the 4 Iliad,’ the ‘^Eneid,’ or the ‘ Paradise Lost .’ 1 
The following is communicated to me by Mr. Venn, of 
Cambridge, the well-known logician : — 
I had a grey parrot, three or four years old, which had 
been taken from its nest in West Africa by those through whom 
I received it. It stood ordinarily by the window, where it could 
equally hear the front and back door bells. In the yard, by the 
back door, was a collie dog, who naturally barked violently at 
nearly all the comers that way. The parrot took to imitating the 
1 Journal of Mental Science , July 1879. 
