MAGPIE, PARROT, AND DOG.

North Otago Times, 3 December 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

MAGPIE, PARROT, AND DOG.

TWO INTERESTING • REOLLLBO" TIONS.. ; •'•!

I once had a magpie which had been brought up ;in a cottage where the mother of the human ; family had a cold' all the while that the \ young I bird was in ; its most .impresalonablo I age, As a consequence it .had learned to reproduce the sounds of human coughing arid sneezing with great accuracy.. When it 'came into my) possession I Jound that at least nine out of overy ten people that passed its cage and heard those' sounds proceeding from it called out, "Oh, what a cold that poor bird's, .got'" .. " ■ '■'■'■■?{■'.'■■>■: [lt was-not at all necessary that a man or woman should be remarkably' foolish to make the remark—l lnye heard it,from a Cabinet Minister, . which "just shows"—nod;of coirse the moment a person who was not an idiot began to reflect on the matter it became obvious that a bird , with a bad cold would not express'1 its afflictions in tin sounds of hu- ' man coughiug and sneezing, , That, was the impression that it ! gave to the minds of even intellifciole j people. . .'. . The common ac-

count to give is that magpies make these sounds by imitation, by association, "parrot-like." as we say, and without any comprehension at all of 'their meaning. "Meaning," in this connection, evidently is in need of definition; but let it pass, and be illustrated by a. story told before, but not in the bearing that it has on this point.

I have a friend, an old grey parrot who is put out in his cage in summer, under a great cedar tree on a lawn from which is a view of a piece of park stretching up'v.a'rd to so.ne coverts. To the same domestic 'civcle as the, parrot belongs a black spaniel called Snap. It was Snao's 'habit,, whsn h thought no one was' looking, to ste ;1 over this piece of park in order to hunt rabbit-3 i-, ; the co.ert aio.e; but often he was detected aii I summoned back, by • an irate "Snap ! Snap!" from his master, a-.d would come crawling back again with the dejected mien of one detected in guilt. This performance the parrot had both seen and heard ,many a time,, and finally began, to enact it for iti own edification. When- he Baw the dog thus stealing up over the park he would ejaculate "Snap ! Snap !" in the identical tones of their common master, • and Snap would every time be taken in by It and comt back in as shame-tailed a fashion ae if it had been his very master's voice.

It is easy, perhaps, to explain to one's satisfaction how the bird learned to chide, or repeat the name of, the dog in just this tone at just this moment-he ,had associated the sound with the appearance of the spanW doing this act of'escapade towards the covert, and when he saw the dog thus engaged ; the sound may have come from him almost automatically ; v but it is difficult to guess what, if any, were his reflections when h( saw the wretched quadruped, detected and charged with guilt, come creeping back at his command. "Westminster Gazette."