INTELLIGENT SPARROWS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143766, 15 April 1912, Page 7

INTELLIGENT SPARROWS.

If tho London sparrows knew what a merry time their Parisian cousins enjoy ahoy would all manage to cross tho Channel and secure quarters in tho neighbourhood of the Tuilerics Gardens. There the little brown birds have no trouble in securing their loud, for everyday kind persons distribute crumbs to them in abundance. The most celebrated of the.-.e sparrow-feeders is M. Henri Pol, a pensioned telegraph clerk, who Is known to almost every sparrow in tho Tuileries. He has a name for each of them, and they respond to that name without hesitation. Lately* they havo missed him, however. He passed many miserable weeks in a dreary hospital, and finally Dr. Valude, tho groat oculist, performed n grave operation for cataract. Owing to the skill and patience of tho oculist M. Henri Pol has regained his sight, and very shortly vjte will again bo amongst his .sparrows of tho Tuileries. Asked how ho first started to feed tho birds of tho Tuileries, M. Henri Pol told a correspondent of tho Paris edition of the New York Herald tho history of his friendship with tho sparrows. “I was born in the Department of tho Somme,” said M. Pol, “and entered the French Telegraphic Service in 1857, to leave it 40 years later, in 1897. Every day, when going to my office, I used to cross the Tuileries, and sometimes I sat on a bench to read my paper. This was my first introduction to the sparrows, whom I occasionally fed with bread crumbs. My love for these little birds went on increasing, and I soon found that they themselves were beginning to know me, quite well. Some time after, I started giving them names, to which they learned to answer. Of course, it seems rather difficult to some people to distinguish one sparrow from another, but, as a matter of fact, they are all very different. After a while the birds grew extraordinarily familiar. A little Imn sparrow, whom 'I named Jeannette, grew to know me so well that she would perch on my hand and pick crumbs from my mouth. Sho was remarkably intelligent, and it was quite an ordinary thing for her to come to be introduced to people when I called her. At tho time of the festivities in connection with the visit of tho Czar to Paris, a sparrow called Nicolas, after tho Emperor, knew me so well that ho used to come to meet me in the street-and pick me out from the crowd in the Rue de Rivoli. This bird had taken up his quarters in tho Pavillkm do Marsan. He know exactly the time at which I was due in the Tuileries, and was always the first of my feather friends to greet me. During tho Boer War, a bird I named ‘Lo Petit Boor’ only answered my call when I spoke English. Tho only signal he would accept were the words, 'Como here, little bird.’ But tho most illustrious of all my sparrows was undoubtedly Chamberlain, whom 1 trained to fight Lo Petit Boer. In fact, his fighting qualities developed to such an extent that he used lo fight with all tho birds.”