GREY PARROT. 
47 
for the Grey Parrot is a long-lived bird, and slowly reaches maturity. 
When removed from his companion, the poor young creature dies of 
slow starvation, and the disconsolate owner wonders, and buys another 
to meet, probably, with a similar fate. 
The only way to preserve these young Parrots is to boil their corn 
until soft, chew a mouthful, and placing the beak of the bird in the 
mouthy let it feed itself there as it has been used to do from the 
mouths of its father and mother, or its kind companions in the dealer’s 
shop. 
There is a vile prejudice still existing in this country against giving 
water to Parrots ; but we have already so fully descanted upon its 
absurdity, not to say wickedness, that we need merely here remark, 
that all animals drink, and can be kept without water only to their 
detriment and manifold discomfort : but the water must be fresh and 
clean, that is a sine qua non: foul water means diarrhaea, inflammation 
of the bowels, fever, and death. 
The Grey Parrot, as we have remarked, grows slowly, and attains 
to a green old age: some specimens are reported to have lived for 
sixty, eighty, and even one hundred years, but the truth of this 
statement we are unable to vouch. 
Apropos of the bird under consideration, a writer in a recent number 
of the Daily Telegraph, under the heading On the Congo with Stanley, 
says: “Flocks of Grey Parrots flew across the sky, alternately screeching 
and whistling melodiously. I have seen it stated erroneously that the 
Grey Parrot never whistles in a wild state. On the contrary, it does 
so very sweetly, and with a great variety of note.” 
Well, one certainly lives and learns: it is comprehensible nevertheless 
that the sibilant utterances of Erithacus in a state of freedom may be 
devoid of the concentrated bitterness that usually marks his attempts 
at vocalization in captivity, when his temper has been spoiled, and 
his digestion ruined, by alternate teasing and stuffing with inappro- 
priate tit bits; or the writer of the above quotation may, by the sight 
of the wild birds, have been pleasantly reminded of some familiar 
“Polly” of his acquaintance, and the associate ideas connected there- 
with, have lent a melody to the Parrot’s notes they might not otherwise 
have possessed: we never saw any wild Parrots (we do not include 
Parrakeets) that did anything else but scream horribly; but then, of 
course, it does not follow that others may not have been more for- 
tunate, and we certainly have not been on the Congo, wandered on 
the shores of Stanley Pool, or gazed on the luxuriant vegetation that 
adorns the islands dotted on the surface of its limped waves: “palms 
beautiful and symmetrical, with hanging clusters of bright orange- 
