Part 10

THE parrots and macaws which live in the Parrot House at the Zoo are so numerous and noisy that the keeper has no leisure to teach them to talk. But a parrot which can say a very few words is very quickly imitated by its neighbours, and a new phrase or word travels from cage to cage, should the birds in the immediate neighbourhood of the accomplished talker be of one of the imitative species. Among birds there are progressive and non-progressive races, which are indifferent to “self-improvement,” and never try to learn a song of their own, much less to imitate the voices of other birds or of men. But the desire to gain new notes is very much more common than is generally believed, and there are at least twenty kinds of birds which are able to reproduce even the complex forms of articulate human speech. Aristotle mentions an Indian parrot which could talk, and “when it drank wine was somewhat improper,” habits and language which it had picked up, no doubt, from Phœnician sailors. But the most accomplished talker of Indian birds is the mynah, a handsome purple-black bird, with a short tail, orange legs and beak, and bright yellow ear-flaps, which run round to the back of its head like a collar. It is a bold, lively bird, with a mellow song and whistle of its own. Its power of reproducing human speech is wonderful, and it exhibits the greatest anxiety that the tones should be correct, first repeating them softly to itself, with its head on one side, and then shouting out the words.

In the Insect House at the Zoo there lives a fine old mynah, who was “deposited” in 1883. While a visitor is examining the Indian moths coming out of their cocoons, he may hear behind him a thoughtful cough, and the “Hulloa!” shouted with startling suddenness. It is the mynah, anxious to be friendly, and to begin a conversation. The Hindoo traders in the bazaars avail themselves of the mynah’s services in a curious way. They teach it to pronounce the holy name of Rama; and while the master’s thoughts are on earthly gains intent, the bird compounds for the neglect by shouting incessantly the name of the god, and texts in honour of his power. If the poet Ovid’s Indian parrot finds its way, as he hoped, to the paradise of birds, and there

“Convertit volucres in sua verba pias,”

it must surely meet the mynahs also.

Another bird which talks better than most, and whistles better than any, is the piping crow. It is a lively black-and-white bird, as large as a rook, but far more elegant in form. Several specimens inhabit the Gardens, but the best is in the western Aviary, where it whistles “Merrily danced the Quaker,” in tones like a flute.

The American blue jay, a most brilliant creature, with lines of emerald and turquoise, is an admirable mimic of many sounds, even of the human voice. Wilson writes of one “which had all the tricks and loquacity of a parrot; pilfered all it could conveniently carry off, answered to its name with great sociability when called upon, and could articulate a number of words pretty distinctly.” Our English jays can also talk, and magpies, especially if kept in good health and spirits by being allowed partial freedom, soon pick up words. Jackdaws and the American crow can also be made to talk. But in all the crow tribe, except the piping crow, the reproduction of human speech seems to be more a trick of mimicry than an effort to acquire a substitute for song. Parrots, mynahs, and some cockatoos take infinite pains to learn correctly and increase their stock of phrases. But the magpie or jay learns what is easy, and takes no further trouble. Even the raven seldom has many words at command, though, owing to its deep, resonant voice and imposing size, it attracts more attention than a chattering jay.

The raven is the largest creature, except man, that can “talk,” and fancy and superstition have naturally exaggerated its powers. Still the speech of the raven has a depth and solemnity which that of no other bird possesses, and whether in boding utterances, like those attributed to the raven in _Barnaby Rudge_, or by Edgar Allen Poe, or in plain business, like the raven in Guildford Street, which used to say “Ostler, here’s a gentleman,” when a customer arrived, its powers are generally marked and recorded. A fine bird, belonging to a “statesman” in Northumberland, used to say “Poor old Ralph,” or call the collie dog in the exact tones used by its master. “It’s my very own voice,” its owner used to say, laughing, as the dog came running in from the garden. But the crow tribe, though as clever as some parrots, are not so easily domesticated, and their beaks and tongues are less well suited for the musical sounds of human speech. Most of the parrots, and some cockatoos and macaws, have both the mental and physical gifts necessary to make them excel in talking. Parrots of all classes have fleshy tongues, moistened with saliva, and the arched beak provides a substitute for our palate and teeth. They have also wide nostrils, and their natural voices are loud enough and strong enough to equal the volume of human speech. In disposition they are highly imitative. Cockatoos are almost like monkeys in mimicking men. For instance, if you bow to them, they will make elaborate bows. If you put your head on one side, they will often do so too. But with many parrots the desire to learn new sounds is not, we think, a mere trick of mimicry, but the desire to possess a song—an accomplishment with which to please, identical in kind with the motive which prompts the young of singing-birds to learn their parents’ notes, or, in the case of the canary, to learn and improve upon a song, not their own, which they have transmitted to their posterity.

The following account of the development of the talking power in a young parrot of which we have seen much lately, is, we submit, a strong confirmation of this view. Our informant is a lady whose sympathies are by no means limited to parrots, as the context will show, and her observations are wholly reliable. “We bought ‘Barry,’” she writes, “when he was quite young before his feathers were fully grown; and we had him about a year before he began to talk. Then he began to make very odd noises, as if he were trying to say words, but could not quite do it. Now he constantly learns new words and sentences, and early in the morning I hear him practising them over to himself, _exactly as our babies used to do in the early morning hours in bed_. If he improves as much in the next ten years as he has in the last, he should be able to recite a poem if we teach him.” There is no reason why a parrot should not continue to increase his stock of phrases as he grows older, if the supposition that he looks upon it as an accomplishment for which he is in some way the better is correct. The butcher-bird, for instance, and the sedge-warbler do not rest _satisfied_ with learning their own notes, but often learn and reproduce the notes of other birds in great perfection. The mockingbird, which, like the sedge-warbler, has a fine song of its own, does the same. But the parrot has an advantage in being very long-lived and constantly in human company. The young parrot mentioned before gave an excellent instance of the association in its mind of words with things. Before it could talk, it was friendly with a kitten which used to enter its cage. This kitten was sent away, and for a year there was not another in the house. Then a grey Persian kitten was bought, and when introduced to the parrot was at once addressed as “Kitty,” a word he had hardly heard since the departure of the other. The _correctness_ of parrots’ imitation, the result, no doubt, of their careful practice, is remarkable. A lady of the Dutch Court, visiting the palace in the wood at the Hague soon after the death of the late Queen of Holland, was startled by hearing the Queen’s voice exactly reproduced. It was a white cockatoo that had been a great pet of hers, which was in a corner of the room.

Parrots have no exclusive liking for the English language. They learn German, French, and Dutch quite easily. Another parrot at the Hague went through part of the Lord’s Prayer in Dutch at an afternoon party, with other fragments of its mistress’s devotions, which it had heard when in her room. All small white and sulphur cockatoos seem to say, “Küpper crou” when they want their heads scratched. We have translated it, “Scratch a poll;” but it is probably pure parrot language. Go up to any cockatoo and say this to him, at the same time holding the hand well above his head, and he will probably answer, and gradually lower his head and crest to allow you to gently ruffle the feathers the wrong way. Macaws do not seem to understand cockatoo language; but the grey parrots often use much the same sound. It seems to be a call-note expressing their willingness to make friends and be petted.

“Is the talking of birds due to mental or physical causes?” is a question often asked. In the first place, no doubt, it is due to the disposition of the bird. Some parrots and cockatoos never learn to talk, though their organs of speech differ in no way from those of others that do. They seem to be without the imitative bias, like the hawks which have curved beaks and thick tongues, but are equally silent. But where the disposition to mimic is present, physical causes limit or widen the bird’s powers. Parrots and the crow tribe are both imitative, but the parrots’ beaks and tongues are more suited for imitating human speech, just as the raven, with his high-arched beak and big throat excels the jay. Other birds with still less suitable organs, such as the sedge-warbler, though excellent mimics, cannot reproduce human speech at all. There seems no reason why parrots, if they would breed in confinement, should not teach their accomplishments to their young ones, as the canaries have done theirs. Perhaps in time the experiment may be made.

ELEPHANT LIFE IN ENGLAND

THE strangely artificial revival of elephant life in the countries north of the Mediterranean, and in districts where the bones of the fossil species show that they once lived and flourished naturally, is yearly more remarkable. The European elephant herd in the present year numbers one hundred and thirteen, or about thirty less than the annual catch in the _keddahs_ of the Indian Government. Their health seems quite independent of climate, to judge from the countries in which they are kept, often with very rough provision against the chances and changes of weather. Russia owns eighteen, Sweden and Norway four, France and Belgium ten each, seven of which are in the great travelling menagerie of the Lockharts, which migrates to and fro across the Franco-Belgian frontier; Germany has thirty-four, and England about the same number; Holland has eight, and Italy two.

The British stock is at present supplied almost entirely from Burmah. There only in the East elephants are bred in a half-wild state and not caught in the _heddahs_. They are brought over to Europe when quite young, and are now so cheap that any one who pleases may become the owner of a sober, well-behaved little elephant from four to five feet high, delivered at the docks, for from £105 to £120, or not more than the average price paid for first-class shire-horses. Their subsequent development depends mainly upon their daily treatment. In those which spend their lives at ease in the elephant palaces at the Zoological Gardens the rate of growth is surprising, and they soon develop into magnificent animals, not surpassed in size by the finest creatures in the stables of Indian rajahs. The pair of Indian elephants now in the Gardens are already nine feet and ten feet high at the shoulder respectively, though when they reached the Gardens in 1876 they were hardly bigger than a Shetland pony. But the greater number of English elephants spend their time as hard-working members of the large circuses and travelling menageries, and lead a wandering, homeless life, in curious contrast to the comfort which surrounds the fortunate inmates of the gardens of learned societies. Their deliberate movements mask a wakeful self-possession which hardly ever deserts them, and whether marching by the cornfields on the open downs, or through the streets of a manufacturing town, the elephant never misses a chance of levying contributions of food on the road. “Where didst thou teach thy elephant that trick?” says Petersen Sahib, in Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s charming tale of the elephant dance, when the animal holds the mahout’s son aloft in its trunk. “Was it to help thee to steal green corn from the roof when the ears are put out to dry?” “Not green corn, Protector of the Poor-melons,” says little Toomai.

In England the elephant is not an accomplice, but helps himself freely in the back streets of the towns, up which he is usually taken, to avoid difficulties with the urban police. He has ever a sharp eye for an open window or door, and many a batch of new loaves smoking on the dresser or bunch of vegetables intended for the mid-day dinner, is extracted through the window, before the good woman, who is admiring the procession at the door, has time to rush back to the rescue. At Sanger’s repository last year a fine gilded car came back for repairs. The body of the car had been filled with loaves of bread on Saturday night and then locked up. An elephant smelt the bread, and not being able to open the lock, turned the whole car over to see if it would open in that way, to the serious damage of the ornamental upper works. The clever picture of the “Disputed Toll,” by Charlton Adams, in which an elephant is painted breaking open a turnpike-gate, records an amusing incident of elephant travel which occurred many years ago outside the pretty little town of Sidmouth in South Devon. Van Ambrugh’s show was expected, and the turnpike keeper locked the gate and demanded toll, not only for the cars but for the animals. The elephant was leading the way, and after much fruitless argument, its keeper, slipping through the turnstile for foot-passengers, said to the elephant, “Come along, Fido,” and the animal at once lifted the gate off its hinges and walked through. Cool and sagacious on the march, they seem also thoroughly to enjoy the tinsel and trappings, the music of the brass band, the lights, noise, and crowd of an evening show. Perhaps there is something in this which recalls to them memories of the “gorgeous East.” Take for instance the annual “World’s Fair” at the Agricultural Hall, which a Hindoo would describe as a very fine _tumasha_, and in which no one but an Oriental, a British working-man, or an elephant, could keep his brains clear for half-an-hour. Two large steam “round-abouts” at either end of the hall, grinding a different tune with an engine of ten-horse power, form only a portion of the bewildering attractions of this Palace of Delight. Opposite each of these machines, at the time of the writer’s last visit, was stalled a small Indian elephant, cool, collected, and sagacious, his business mind wholly intent on raising contributions from the public. One occupied a compartment in the centre of what was magnificently described as the “Mammoth Wild Animal Congregation.” He was a very little mammoth, not five feet high, black and bristly, supported on one side by a Persian goat and a kangaroo, and on the other by a couple of llamas. In front stood a stall of cakes, and to every visitor who came past the elephant pointed out the biscuit pile, his trunk maintaining a line true as the needle to the Pole, while his head and eye followed the movements of the passer-by. When quite neglected and alone, he tried to attract attention by dancing a kind of double-shuffle to the tune of the “round-about.”

Some one ventured to give a biscuit to the unfortunate goat, its neighbour. The elephant dexterously twisted it from between the nibbling lips of the goat, and at once mounted guard to prevent any such diversion of its dues again. With ears cocked and eye alert, he held his trunk stretched out a few inches above the goat’s head, taking it away for a moment to receive offerings tendered elsewhere, but switching it back to the suspected quarter the moment the dainty was swallowed.

Elephants suffer from nervousness, and occasionally from unreasoning panic, in England, just as they do in India. A windmill has been known to cause them to jib like a horse, and a large and very tame female Indian elephant at the Zoological Gardens actually died of fright, caused by a thunderstorm in the summer of 1855. She was out at exercise, when a violent and reverberant peal of thunder caused her to break away from her keeper. When caught she was found to be in a pitiable state of terror, shaking and trembling with violent spasmodic twitchings of the whole body. When led back to her stable she continued to show unmistakable symptoms of shock and collapse. In a short time she lay down, and after a few days died, in spite of the anxious and skilled attention which she received from the first.

Minor instances of panic are not uncommon, but it is not often that the English-trained animal loses his head so as to be a source of danger to the public, as so frequently happens in India. This is partly because they seldom travel alone. In Mr. Sanger’s menagerie, for instance, the elephants are led when on the march by an old chestnut thoroughbred, known as the “jumping horse,” from his feat of clearing six five-barred gates in succession. It was when out at exercise without its usual companion that one of these elephants bolted at Highbury last September, and spent an afternoon in rambling about the suburbs of North London. The damage done by the animal was greatly exaggerated, so far as the writer could judge after a visit to the scene of its exploits. The elephant was drinking from a water-trough just opposite Finsbury Park, when it took fright at the sudden ringing of a tram-car bell. Pursued by boys and policemen, it ran through the Park and down a street near the lower entrance. Seeing a large wooden gate, like that which leads to its own yard at Tottenham, it burst it open, and found itself in a labyrinth of small sheds and wooden stables at the back of some shops. Threading its way through these with wonderful agility, it ultimately arrived in a _cul de sac_ in the yard at the back of a fishmonger’s shop. Having thrown off its pursuers by this manœuvre, the elephant proceeded to make itself as much at home as circumstances permitted. It first kicked into quiet a collie dog which had resented its intrusion. Next it picked up its kennel and pitched it over the garden wall. Then cautiously approaching the kitchen door, it looked in to see if any provisions were lying within reach. Meantime the fishmonger, who was taking a nap on his sofa, was apprised that there was an elephant in his back-yard. Trespass, whether by man or beast, is a thing no British house-holder can put up with; so the fishmonger took down his whip and went to turn it “off his premises.” “Jim” was at that moment looking in at the door, and elephant and fishmonger met on the threshold. Victory lay with the latter, but only to a limited extent. For the elephant, still bent on finding provender, broke in the door of the stable in which the tradesman kept his pony. The door was only six and a half feet high, and the elephant more than eight. But it stepped in, and being familiar with the economy of a stable, looked for the corn-bin. This found, it emptied the whole of the contents on the floor, and soon ate up a bushel of oats. This was not to be borne; so the plucky fishmonger determined to “catch” the robber when it emerged from the stable. This it did rather sooner than it had intended, as the pony, frightened at its strange visitor, avenged the collie by kicking the elephant’s ribs. Outside, the indignant fishmonger and his man had barred the passage by drawing a light van across it, and, armed with whips, mounted guard on the other side of the barricade. Jim on his part took a long drink out of a small slate water-tank which stood near, and having refreshed the inner elephant with food and drink, surveyed the situation at his leisure. Seeing no other way out of the yard than that by which he had entered, he walked up, and with his head upset the van, and brushing past the garrison and through the crowd outside the gates, resumed his rambles in the streets. When captured, it was long past seven o’clock, and the animal was then well beyond the river Lea. No one was hurt by the elephant, and beyond the wanton destruction of a small shed belonging to a fishmonger, which it mischievously broke into pieces the size of barrel staves, and an unfortunate rush through five garden walls in a rather awkward place in Highbury Terrace, it did little harm to property. Next day it was seen by the writer, apparently none the worse for its adventures, though a violent scolding administered by the keeper’s wife caused it obvious uneasiness. It could hardly swallow the hay which it was eating, but taking it from its mouth, rubbed its knees with it, turning its head away, and exhibiting signs of the utmost penitence and confusion.

African elephants are now very scarce in this country. This is due partly to the total blockade by the Dervish power at Khartoum of the ancient trade-route down the river. At present there are only seven left in Europe; of these one is in the London Zoological Gardens, one at Manchester, and one in Wombwell’s travelling menagerie. But except to complete the collections of learned societies, the African is far less in demand than formerly. The elephant trade exists mainly to supply performing animals for the circuses, and the African is not popular with circus owners, or with their keepers or trainers. This is strange, because it was in the Roman circus that the African elephant first became a popular favourite in Europe. Though the first war-elephants captured by the legions were baited to death in the arena, the later arrivals appealed just as much to the good-nature of the _populus Romanus_ as do their descendants to the British public. This fact suggests one of the few humorous remarks which can safely be credited to a Roman; and in keeping with the rarity of the event the joke was made by almost the greatest of all Romans, Caius Octavius Augustus, Emperor, Proconsul, Prince of the Senate, and Pontifex Maximus. One of the humbler Quirites, anxious to present a petition, was so fortunate as to escape the eye of the lictors and to catch that of the Emperor, who graciously stretched out his hand for the document which he saw lurking beneath the folds of the citizen’s gown. Flustered at the sudden chance of royal protection, he pushed his scroll towards the outstretched hand, then shrunk back before the thought of almost personal contact with the human embodiment of power. “Come, man,” said Augustus, “do you think you are giving a penny to the elephant?” “_Putasne te assem elephanto dare?_”