BIRDS— MEMORY. 
269 
dog. After a time I was interested in observing the discrimi- 
native association between the back-door bell and the dog’s bark 
in the parrot’s mind. Even when the dog was not there, or for 
any other cause did not bark, the parrot would constantly bark 
when the back-door bell sounded, but never (that I could hear) 
when the front-door bell was heard. 
This is but a trifle in the way of intelligence, but it struck 
me as an interesting analogous case to a law of association often 
loticed by writers ou human psychology. 
The celebrated parrot that belonged to the Buffon 
family and of which the Comte de Buffon wrote, exhibited 
in a strange manner the association of its ideas. For he 
was frequently in the habit of asking himself for his own 
claw, and then never failed to comply with his own request 
by holding it out, in the same way as he did when asked 
for his claw by anybody else. This, however, probably 
arose, not, as Buffon or his sister Madame Nadault sup- 
posed, from the bird not knowing its own voice, but 
rather from the association between the words and the 
gesture. 
According to Margrave, parrots sometimes chatter their 
phrases in their dreams, and this shows a striking simi- 
larity of psychical processes in the operations of memory 
with those which occur in ourselves. 
Similarly, Mr. Walter Pollock, writes me of his own 
parrot : — 
In this parrot the sense of association is very strongly de- 
veloped. If one word picked up at a former home comes into 
its head, and is uttered by it, it immediately follows this word 
up with all the other words and phrases picked up at the same 
place and period. 
Lastly, parrots not only remember, but recollect ; that 
is to say, they know when there is a missing link in a 
train of association, and purposely endeavour to pick it 
up. Thus, for instance, the late Lady Napier told me 
an interesting series of observations on this point which 
she had made upon an intelligent parrot of her own. They 
were of this kind. Taking such a phrase as 6 Old Dan 
Tucker,’ the bird would remember the beginning and the 
end, and try to recollect the middle. For it would say 
