Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/467

 training never completely frees their good manners from the corruption of evil communications.

Many parrots will live from twenty to thirty years, and Le Vaillant mentions one which attained the venerable age of 93. It was the property of an Amsterdam merchant, and it talked remarkably well. It would fetch its master's night-cap and slippers, and would call out if any stranger came into the shop when no one was there to serve, screaming until somebody came. It had a good memory, and easily learnt sentences in Dutch; but at 60 this faculty began to fail, at 65 the moulting was irregular, and at 90 the bird was decrepit, blind, and voiceless, gradually sinking into a kind of lethargy, in which condition it finally died.

Another famous parrot was that of Colonel O'Kelly, in whose family it had been for fifty years, being so much thought of that one hundred