grief or despair; the most insensible of mankind would have been moved. His faithful consort at last expired. From that moment he himself languished, and survived her but a few months.” “An instance of the same kind,” continued Uncle Thomas, “is related by Mr. Audubon, in an account which he gives of an experiment to teach a Carolina Parrokeet to speak.—‘Anxious,’ says he, ‘to try the effects of education on one which I had but slightly wounded in the wing, I fixed up a place for it in the stern of my boat, and presented it with cockle-burs, the favourite food of the American Parrot, which it freely fed on in less than an hour after being on board. The intermediate time between eating and sleeping was occupied in gnawing the sticks that formed its place of confinement, in order to make a practicable breach; which it repeatedly effected. When I abandoned the river and travelled by land, I wrapped it closely up in a silk handkerchief, tying it tightly round, and carried it in my pocket. When I stopped for refreshment, I unbound my prisoner and gave it its allowance, which it generally despatched with great dexterity, unhusking the seeds from the bur in a twinkling.’ In recommitting it to ‘durance vile,’ we generally had a quarrel, during which it frequently paid me in kind for the wound I had inflicted, and for depriving it of liberty, by cutting and almost disabling several of my fingers with its sharp and powerful bill. The path through the wilderness, between Nashville and Natchez, is, in some places, bad beyond description. There are dangerous creeks to swim, miles of morass to struggle through, rendered almost as gloomy as night by a prodigious growth of timber, and an underwood of canes and other evergreens; while the descent into these sluggish streams is often ten or fifteen feet perpendicular into a bed of deep clay. In some of the worst of these places, where I had, as it were, to fight my way through, the Parrokeet frequently escaped from my pocket, obliging me to dismount and pursue it through the worst of the morass before I could regain it. On these occasions I was several times tempted to abandon it, but I persisted in bringing it along. When, at night I encamped in the woods I placed it on the baggage beside me, where it usually sat with great composure, dozing and gazing at the fire till morning. In this way I carried it upwards of a thousand miles in my pocket, when it was exposed all day to the jolting of the horse, but regularly liberated at meal-times and in the evening, at which it always expressed great satisfaction. In passing through the Chickasaw and Chocktaw nations, the Indians, wherever I stopped to feed, collected around me—men, women, and children—laughing and seeming wonderfully amused with the novelty of my companion. The Chickasaw called it in their language, _Kelinky_, but when they heard me call it Poll they soon repeated the name, and wherever I chanced to stop among these people we soon became familiar