CHAPTER X.

BIRDS.

ADEQUATELY to treat of the intelligence of birds a separate volume would be required; here it must be enough to Ideal with this class as I shall afterwards deal with the Mammalia-namely, by giving an outline sketch of the more prominent features of their psychology.

Memory.

The memory of birds is well developed. Thus, although we are much in the dark on the whole subject of migration so much so that I reserve its discussion with all the problems that this presents for a separate chapter in my next work—we may at least conclude that the return of the same pair of swallows every year to the same nest must be due to the animals remembering the precise locality of their nests. Again, Buckland gives an account of a pigeon which remembered the voice of its mistress after an absence of eighteen months; but I have not been able to

Curiosities, &c., p. 126. Wilson also, in his American Ornithology, gives the following sufficiently credible account of the memory of a crow:A gentleman who resided on the Delaware, a few miles below Easton, had raised [reared] a crow, with whose tricks and society be used frequently to amuse himself. This crow lived long in the family, but at length disappeared, having, as was then supposed, been shot by some vagrant gunner, or destroyed by accident. About eleven months after this, as the gentleman one morning, in company with several others. was standing on the river shore, a number of crows happened to pass by; one of them left the flock, and flying directly towards the company, alighted on the gentleman's shoulder, and began to gabble away with great volubility, as one long-absent friend naturally enough does on meeting another. On recovering from his surprise the gentleman instantly recognised his old acquaintance, and endeavoured, by several civil but sly manœuvres, to lay hold of him; but the crow, not altogether relishing quite so much familiarity, having now had a taste of the sweets of

meet with satisfactory evidence of the memory of a bird enduring for a longer time than this.

As it is a matter of interest in comparative psychology to trace as far as possible into detail the similarities of a mental faculty as it occurs in different groups of animals, and as the faculty of memory first admits of detailed study in the class which we are now considering, I shall here devote a paragraph to the facts concerning the exhibition of memory by birds where its mechanism best admits of being analysed; I refer to the learning of articulate phrases and tunes by talking and musical birds. The best observations in this connection with which I am acquainted are those of Dr. Samuel Wilks, F.R.S., and therefore I shall quote in extenso the portion of his paper which refers to the memory of parrots: other portions of this paper I shall have occasion to quote in my next work:-

When my parrot first came into my possession, several years ago, it was quite unlettered, and I therefore had an opportunity of observing the mode in which it acquired the accomplishment of speech. I was very much struck with its manner of learning, and the causes for its speaking on special occasions. The first seemed to resemble very much the method of children in learning their lessons, and the second to be due to some association or suggestion—the usual provocative for set speeches at all periods of human life. A parrot is well known to imitate sounds in a most perfect manner, even to the tone of the voice, besides having a compass which no human being can approach, ranging from the gravest to the most acute note. My bird, though possessing a good vocabulary of words and sentences, can only retain them for a few months unless kept constantly in practice by the suggestive recurrence of some circumstance which causes their continual utterance. If forgotten, however, they are soon revived in the memory by again repeating them a few times, and much more speedily than any new sentence can be acquired. In beginning to teach the parrot a sentence, it has to be repeated many times, the bird all the while listening most attentively by turning the opening of the ear as close as possible to the speaker. After a few hours it is heard attempting liberty, cautiously eluded all his attempts; and suddenly glancing his eye on his distant companions, mounted in the air after them, soon overtook and mingled with them, and was never afterwards seen to return.'

to say the phrase, or, I should say, trying to learn it. It evidently has the phrase somewhere in store, for eventually this is uttered perfectly, but at first the attempts are very poor and ludicrous. If the sentence be composed of a few words, the first two or three are said over and over again, and then another and another word added, until the sentence is complete, the pronunciation at first being very imperfect, and then becoming gradually more complete, until the task is accomplished. Thus hour after hour will the bird be indefatigably working at the sentence, and not until some days have elapsed will it be perfect. The mode of acquiring it seems to me exactly what I have observed in a child learning a French phrase; two or three words are constantly repeated, and then others added, until the whole is known, the pronunciation becoming more perfect as the repetition goes on. I found also on whistling a popular air to my parrot that she picked it up in the same way, taking note by note until the whole twenty-five notes were complete. Then the mode of forgetting, or the way in which phrases and airs pass from its recollection, may be worth remarking. The last words or notes are first forgotten, so that soon the sentence remains unfinished or the air only half whistled through. The first words are the best fixed in the memory; these suggest others which stand next to them, and so on till the last, which have the least hold on the brain. These, however, as I have before mentioned, can be easily revived on repetition. This is also a very usual process in the human subject: for example, an Englishman speaking French will, in his own country, if no opportunity occur for conversation, apparently forget it; he no sooner, however, crosses the Channel and hears the language than it very soon comes back to him again. In trying to recall poerus learned in childhood or in school days, although at that period hundreds of lines may have been known, it is found that in manhood we remember only the two or three first lines of the Iliad,' the 'Eneid,' or the 'Paradise Lost."1

The following is communicated to me by Mr. Venn, of Cambridge, the well-known logician :—

I had a grey parrot, three or four years old, which had been taken from its nest in West Africa by those through whom I received it. It stood ordinarily by the window, where it could equally hear the front and back door bells. In the yard, by the back door, was a collie dog, who naturally barked violently at nearly all the comers that way. The parrot took to imitating the

Journal of Mental Science, July 1879.

dog. After a time I was interested in observing the discriminative association between the back-door bell and the dog's bark in the parrot's mind. Even when the dog was not there, or for any other cause did not bark, the parrot would constantly bark when the back-door bell sounded, but never (that I could hear) when the front-door bell was heard.

This is but a trifle in the way of intelligence, but it struck me as an interesting analogous case to a law of association often noticed by writers on human psychology.

The celebrated parrot that belonged to the Buffon family and of which the Comte de Buffon wrote, exhibited in a strange manner the association of its ideas. For he was frequently in the habit of asking himself for his own claw, and then never failed to comply with his own request by holding it out, in the same way as he did when asked for his claw by anybody else. This, however, probably arose, not, as Buffon or his sister Madame Nadault supposed, from the bird not knowing its own voice, but rather from the association between the words and the gesture.

According to Margrave, parrots sometimes chatter their phrases in their dreams, and this shows a striking similarity of psychical processes in the operations of memory with those which occur in ourselves.

Similarly, Mr. Walter Pollock, writes me of his own parrot :

In this parrot the sense of association is very strongly developed. If one word picked up at a former home comes into its head, and is uttered by it, it immediately follows this word up with all the other words and phrases picked up at the same place and period.

Lastly, parrots not only remember, but recollect; that is to say, they know when there is a missing link in a train of association, and purposely endeavour to pick it up. Thus, for instance, the late Lady Napier told me an interesting series of observations on this point which she had made upon an intelligent parrot of her own. They were of this kind. Taking such a phrase as 'Old Dan Tucker,' the bird would remember the beginning and the end, and try to recollect the middle. For it would say

very slowly, 'Old—old—old—old' (and then very quickly) 'Lucy Tucker.' Feeling that this was not right, it would try again as before, Old-old-old-old-old Bessy Tucker,' substituting one word after another in the place of the sought-for word 'Dan.' And that the process was one of truly seeking for the desired word was proved by the fact that if, while the bird was saying, 'Old-old—old— old,' any one threw in the word 'Dan,' he immediately supplied the Tucker.'

Emotions.

As regards emotions, it is among birds that we first meet with a conspicuous advance in the tenderer feelings of affection and sympathy. Those relating to the sexes and the care of progeny are in this class proverbial for their intensity, offering, in fact, a favourite type for the poet and moralist. The pining of the love-bird' for its absent mate, and the keen distress of a hen on losing her chickens, furnish abundant evidence of vivid feelings of the kind in question. Even the stupid-looking ostrich has heart enough to die for love, as was the case with a male in the Rotund of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, who, having lost his wife, pined rapidly away. It is remarkable that in some species-notably pigeons-conjugai fidelity should be so strongly marked; for this shows, not only what may be called a refinement of sexual feeling, but also the presence of an abiding image in the mind's eye of the lover. For instance,

Referring to the habits of the mandarin duck (a Chinese species) Mr. Bennett says that Mr. Beale's aviary afforded a singular corroboration of the fidelity of the birds in question. Of a pair in that gentleman's possession, the drake being one night purloined by some thieves, the unfortunate duck displayed the strongest marks of despair at her bereavement, retiring into a corner, and altogether neglecting food and drink, as well as the care of her person. In this condition she was courted by a drake who had lost his mate, but who met with no encouragement from the widow. On the stolen drake being subsequently recovered and restored to the aviary, the most extravagant demonstrations of joy were displayed by the fond couple; but this was not all, for, as if informed by his spouse of the gallant