280 CHILDREN'S BOOK FOR SABBA THI HOURS.

 place of chaplain to a ship, aid recited
 STORIES OF PARROTS.
 the prayer and rosary to the sailors.
 YOUNG midshipman has just Another one would say the Lord's Prayer
 returned from Africa, and lying on his back, placing together the
 brought with him a fine speci- toes of his feet as we join our hands in
 men of a gray, tufted parrot. the act of prayer.
As he was seated on his sea-trunk, hold- Some children, perhaps, say their
ing Mrs. Polly on his hand, a little boy, prayers lying on their backs, after they
with his hoop and stick, has stopped to go to bed. But, for children, this is a.
see her. He holds out a piece of crack- very lazy and irreverent manner of ad-
er, and is trying to persuade her to take dressing our Heavenly Father.
it and become friends. A man asked a parrot to laugh,"
 Parrots are a peculiar kind of bird. when it immediately burst out laughing,
By means of their beaks and claws, they and then cried out, an instant after, 0,
'are great climbers. They will sit-on a the great fool who made me laugh!" A
perch on one foot, and use the other to keeper of a glass shop had a parrot which,
take food to their beaks, whenever he broke any thing, or knocked
 They are easily tamed, and learn to over a vase, always exclaimed in a tone
speak many words, and they have a re- of anger, "Awkward brute! he never
markable talent for imitating the cries of does any thing else."
animals, the sounds of different musical Henry the Seventh had a parrot which
instruments, the gestures of those they he kept in a room next to the Thames, in
see, etc.; and they contribute, in this his palace at Westminster. The parrot
way, to the amusement and diversion of had learned to repeat a great many sen-
those around them. tences from the boatmen and passengers.
 The species most remarkable for their One day, sporting itself upon its perch,
mimic babbling faculties are the Gray it fell into the river. The bird no sooner
Parrot, or Jaco, a native of Africa, and discovered where it was, than it immedi-
the Green Parrot, from the West Indies ately cried, A boat! a boat !-twenty
and Tropical America. pounds for a boat !" A waterman, who
 There are a great many amusing stories happened to be near the place where the
told of these birds, parrot was floating, picked it up, and
 Louis Figuier, in his book on Reptiles restored it to the king, demanding the
and Birds, has collected several, of which promised reward. This was refused;
the following are specimens : but it was agreed that, as the parrot had
 In the sixteenth century a cardinal offered a sum, the man should again
paid a hundred crowns for a parrot be- refer to its determination for the sum
cause it recited the Apostles' Creed cor- he was to receive. The reference was
rectly. Another parrot supplied the made, when the parrot screamed out, as