I now turn to the parrot’s power of mimicry in human language. This power is only an incidental result of the general intelligence of parrots, combined with the other peculiarities of their social life and forestine character. Dominant woodland animals, like monkeys and parrots, at least if vegetarian in their habits, are almost always gregarious, noisy, mischievous, and imitative. And the imitation results directly from a somewhat high order of intelligence. The power of intellect, in all except the very highest phases, is merely the ability to accurately imitate another. Monkeys imitate action to a great extent, but their voices are hardly flexible enough for very much mimicry of the human voice. Parrots and some other birds, on the contrary, like the mocking bird, being endowed with considerable flexibility of voice, imitate either songs or spoken words with great distinctness. In the parrot the power of attention is also very considerable, for the bird will often repeat to itself the lesson it has decided to learn. But most of us forget that at best the parrot knows only the general application of a sentence, not the separate meanings of its component words. It knows, for example, that “Polly wants a lump of sugar” is a phrase often followed by a gift of food. But to believe it can understand an exclamation like “What a homely lot of parrots!” is to credit the bird with genuine comprehension. A careful consideration of the evidence has convinced almost all scientific men that, at the most, a parrot knows the meaning of a sentence in the same way as a dog understands the meaning of “Rats” or a horse knows the significance of “Get up.” Lawrence Irwell. How can our fancies help but go Out from this realm of mist and rain, Out from this realm of sleet and snow, When the first Southern violets blow? —Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Spring in New England.” POLLY. Letty was out under the big elm tree watching the kitten playing with the autumn leaves that were on the ground. Suddenly something struck Letty on the shoulder. She looked around quickly, thinking that somebody had thrown a stone at her. No one was in sight, though she looked all about and even up in the tree. Then she noticed that the kitten was rolling something with its paws. She stooped and picked up what looked like a little bunch of elm leaves. She thought it strange that they should be stuck together, and when she found that it was quite heavy she was still more surprised. She carried it into the house to show to her mother. “What is it?” she asked. “It came down off the tree and hit me on my shoulder. Is there a stone inside of it?” “No,” said her mother. “It is a chrysalis. Some worm that lived on the elm tree drew these leaves together and spun a little case inside, and when the leaves were ready to fall, the chrysalis came down with them.”