File:The history of birds - their varieties and oddities, comprising graphic descriptions of nearly all known species of birds, with fishes and insects, the world over, and illustrating their varied (14563677879).jpg

Identifier: historyofbirdsth00bing (find matches)
Title: The history of birds : their varieties and oddities, comprising graphic descriptions of nearly all known species of birds, with fishes and insects, the world over, and illustrating their varied habits, modes of life, and distinguishing peculiarities by means of delightful anecdotes and spirited engravings
Year: 1880 (1880s)
Authors: Bingley, William, 1774-1823
Subjects: Birds Zoology
Publisher: Philadelphia : Edgewood Publishing Co.
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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an claim from its antic imitation of our gestures and actions. Ithighly diverts and amuses us; and in solitude it is company: thebird takes part in conversation, it laughs, it breathes tender expres-sions, or mimics grave discourse; and its words, uttered indiscriminately, please by their incongruity, and sometimes excite surprise bytheir aptness. Willughby tells us of a Parrot, which, when a personsaid to it, Laugh, Poll, laugh, laughed accordingly, and the instantafter screamed out, What a fool to make me laugh I Another,which had grown old with its master, shared with him the infirmitiesof age. Being accustomed to hear scarcely any thing but the words, I am sick; when a. person asked it, How dye do, Poll ? howdye do? I am sick, it replied in a doleful tone, stretching itselfalong, I »m sick. Dr. Goldsmith says, that a Parrot belonging to King Henry theSeventh, having been kept in a room next the Thames, in his palaceat Westminster had learned to repeat many sentences from the boat
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FOLLY AND HER ENEMIES. 87 88 THE rELL0\7-WINGED PARROT. men and passengers. One day, sporting on its perch, it unliickiljfoil into the water. The bird had no sooner discovered its situation,than it called aloud, * A boat! twenty pounds for a boat I Awaterman, happening to be near the place where the Parrot wasfloating, immediately took it uj), and restored it to the king; demand-ing, as the bird was a favorite, that he should be paid the reward thatit. had called out. This was refused; but it was agreed that, as theParrot had offered a reward, the man should again refer to its deter-mination for the sum he was *o receive— Give the knave a groat,the bird screamed aloud, the instant the reference was made. Mr, Locke, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, has relatedan anecdote concerning a Parrot, of which, however incredible itmay appear, he seems to have had so much evidence, as at least to havebelieved it himself The story is this: During the government ofPrince Maurice in Brazi

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