n Cookie." 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
(25) 
“ Cockie.” 
By MISS DYDDGU HAMILTON. 
I am a patient, law-abiding citizen, so much 
so, indeed, that rather than turn active, or even 
passive resister, I have for years past paid 
double education rates, and submitted myself 
to re-vaccination no less than seven times during 
the late small-pox scares. Even now I sit 
placidly writing by dim candle light while our 
all-powerful Borough Council, attempting to 
“ convert ” the electric current, succeeds only, 
judging by the profane language I hear, in 
fin converting the ratepayers of this district. 
Cockie and the I. R. D. 
When, therefore, some few months ago my 
servant announced that a young man from the 
Inland Revenue Department had called for the 
third time about the licence, and that he threat¬ 
ened to “ take proceedings ” immediately if I 
declined to see him, reluctantly I took my feet 
off the fender and descended to the front door, 
where awaited me a meek-looking young man, 
hat in hand. 
“ Dog licences should be taken out on the 
1 st of January,” were the unexpected words 
with which he greeted me. 
“ Indeed ! ” I answered vaguely, wondering 
what he could be driving at. 
“ It is now the 23rd of March,” he continued, 
eyeing me sternly. 
“ I believe so,” I said, after a hasty glance 
at the newspaper I held. 
“ And you have no dog licence,” he pursued, 
looking at me, as I thought, more and more 
threateningly. 
“Why should I have one? I am not a dog,” 
I replied, beginning to wonder where this pecu¬ 
liar young man had escaped from. 
“ But you keep a dog, and-” 
“ Not since I left Taviton Street three years 
ago,” I hastened to assure him. “ My dog died 
there, and he is buried in the garden.” 
The Officer of Excise smiled an incredulous 
smile as he observed : “ Dead dogs don’t bark.” 
“ No, indeed—at least, I have never heard 
one,” I answered as soothingly as I knew how, 
for by this time I felt sure that the poor man’s 
brain had been turned by the death of some 
favourite dog, whose spookish bark still haunted 
him. 
But my remark had no soothing effect. On 
the contrary, the meek youth’s eyes positively 
flashed as he went on : “ The constable on duty 
here tells me that he constantly hears a dog 
barking in this house both by day and night. 
The penalty for not taking out a licence is /j‘5, 
and if-” 
The Member for Barkshire. 
But, as he raised his voice in anger, he was 
interrupted. Bow wow wow, bow wow—such 
a fierce and noisy barking, and only too obvi¬ 
ously proceeding from my dining-room. With 
an air of triumph the irate Inland Revenue 
officer pushed open the door and looked in, 
whilst I, grasping the true inwardness of the 
situation at last, sank down on the stairs, over- 
" Cockie " barking at the Officer of Excise. 
come with laughter. For the supposed dog, 
whose unlicensed barking had caused such com¬ 
motion at Somerset House, was no less a person 
than “ Cockie,” a large white cockatoo, whose 
powers of talking and imitation are quite re¬ 
markable even in a bird of his talented kind. 
The Greater Sulphur-crested Cockatoo is a 
native of Australia. He is a bird of great wings 
and strong flight, and, as one saith, “ he hath 
the voice of a fiend, for he hath an horrible 
voice.” That is when he gives vent to his 
natural yells and screams, or to the imitation of 
railway whistles and motor hooters, at which 
feats he is an adept. Otherwise he speaks in 
a more human, less Punch-and-Judy-like voice 
than that of either the Gray parrot or the Green 
—his chief rivals in popular favour. The Gray 
parrot excels the cockatoo in the number and 
variety of the sentences he can remember and 
repeat, while the Green Amazon beats him at 
laughing, crying, and the mimicking of con¬ 
versations between two different persons—a man 
and woman, or woman and child, the bird speak¬ 
ing in the voice of each alternately. The cocka¬ 
too is more playful, more intelligent, and much 
more excitable than any parrot. 
