Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/554

536 after the meaning of the song of the birds was learned. But when these birds, which are more usually isolated—whence they have been named Fringilla cœlebs, or celibates—hop around our houses and also utter their amorous trills at another than the mating season, they are evidently not calling the female. Should we not then seek to determine by the tone whether their call, which is always the same, is amorous or not?

In countries where flocks of turkeys are raised one can learn very quickly from their gobblings when they have captured a hare. If they meet him standing still or lying down, they form in a circle around him, and, putting their heads down, repeat continually their peculiar cries. The hare remains quiet, and it is sometimes possible to take him up, terrorized as he is in the midst of the black circle of gobbling beaks and heads. The language of the turkeys is at that time incontestably significant. It is war like, and similar to that of the males when they are fighting. In the present instance, they have joined for war, and they make it on the frightened hare.

My Jaco, like all parrots, which are excellent imitators, pronounces a few words and repeats them over and over again. Such birds amuse us, because the words they know sometimes happen to be ludicrously fitting. A bird of this kind had been struck by the note sounded by the wind blowing into a room through a crack in the glass-work whenever a certain door was opened; and he had become so perfect in his imitation that they sometimes, on hearing the noise, went to shut the door when it was not open. Jaco formerly belonged to a very pious old lady who was accustomed to say her litanies with another person. He had caught the words "Pray for us" in the invocations to the several saints, and said them so well as sometimes to deceive his learned mistress, and cause her to think she was saying her litanies with two colleagues. When Jaco was out of food, and any one passed by him, he would say, "My poor Cocotte" or "My poor rat!" in an arch, mawkish, protracted tone that indicated very clearly what he wanted, and that his drinking-cup was empty. There was no doubt in the house as to his meaning; and whenever one heard it he said, "He has nothing to eat." He was exceedingly fond of fresh pits of apples and pears, and I was in the habit of collecting them and keeping them to give him. So, whenever, as I came near him, I put my hand into my pocket.he never failed to say, "Poor Cocco!" in a supplicating tone which it was impossible to mistake. A sugar-plum is a choice morsel to him. He can tell what it is from a distance when I hold it out in my fingers; and when I give it to him he can not restrain himself if it has been any considerable time since he has had the delicacy. Usually, after having made the first motion to get it.