Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/465



F all the members of the feathered tribes, there are none which have been greater favourites, and have been regarded with a greater degree of genuine attachment, than parrots. The beauty of their plumage, with its wealth and variety of gorgeous colours, their symmetry of form, and their gracefulness of manner, would alone have been sufficient to give them their popularity. But the closest link they have established with our affections is, of course, found in their wonderful faculty for the repetition of spoken words and various familiar sounds, together with their possession, in many instances, of a reasoning power which suggests that they are not always mere imitators, but really understand the general sense of what they say. Combined with this power of speech, the fond attachment which they are capable of showing towards those who feed or are otherwise kind to them leads to their being among the most favoured, as they seem to be also among the best fitted, companions of human beings. This place of honour in the animal world they have held for very many centuries. There was, indeed, a time when they were regarded in India and elsewhere as sacred; and anybody who dared to injure one of them was regarded as guilty of a dreadful crime. It is true that since then they have fallen somewhat from their high estate, and that in this more degenerate age the common Amazon parrot has been shot in great numbers in the eastern parts of Brazil for the prosaic purpose of making a particular kind of soup, to which the natives are partial; while the naturalist Gould waxes quite eloquent when he sounds the praises of parakeet pie. But, in our own country, though we do not go either to the one extreme of holding them sacred, or to the other extreme of putting them into pies, parrots still occupy a place of honour in our households; and a well-behaved "Pretty Poll" who has been duly instructed in the accomplishments of her kind, is still the source of as great a degree of pleasure as ever.

Yet those English people who do not travel far beyond the limits of their own land fail to see the parrot to the best advantage. Their acquaintance with the bird is chiefly confined to seeing it either the solitary occupant of a wire cage, over which it climbs with a slowness suggestive of limited powers of motion, or else standing on an uncovered perch, to which it is attached by a chain, in company with a group of others. In their native condition, however, the parrots are found in vast assemblies, which are often a thousand or more in number, and, seen clustered together and talking in loud and excited tones on the trees of some dark forest or sequestered swamp, or taking long, though low, flights through the air to their favourite watering places, with the sun