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TALKING BIRDS. 
The parrots and macaws which live in the Parrot 
House at the Zoo are so numerous and noisy that the 
keeper has no leisure to teach them to talk. But a 
parrot which can say a very few words is very quickly 
imitated by its neighbours, and a new phrase or word 
travels from cage to cage, should the birds in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the accomplished talker 
be of one of the imitative species. Among birds there 
are progressive and non-progressive races, which are 
indifferent to “ self-improvement,” and never try to 
learn a song of their own, much less to imitate the 
voices of other birds or of men. But the desire to 
gain new notes is very much more common than is 
generally believed, and there are at least twenty kinds 
of birds which are able to reproduce even the complex 
forms of articulate human speech. Aristotle mentions 
an Indian parrot which could talk, and u when it drank 
wine was somewhat improper,” habits and language 
which it had picked up, no doubt, from Phoenician 
sailors. But the most accomplished talker of Indian 
birds is the mynah, a handsome purple-black bird, with 
