'There is a fine date-tree,' says a
recent writer, 'overhanging a kind of school, at the end of one of the
streets in the town of Jubbulpore, quite covered with the nests of the
baya bird; and they are seen every day, and all day, fluttering about
in scores, while the noisy children at their play fill the street
below, almost within arm's reach of them.'
Almost all the natives of India are fond of rearing pet birds; and
the pet is, more frequently than otherwise, a parrot, which is prized
for its conversation. The same taste prevailed, we are told, in the
fifteenth century, in the city of Paris, where talking-birds were hung
out almost at every window. The authority says, that this was attended
with rather an awkward result. 'Leading the public life they did, in
which they were exposed to every sort of society, the natural morality
of the birds was so far lost, that they had become fluent in every
term of reproach and indecency; and thunders of applause were elicited
among the crowd of passengers by the aptness of their repartees.' In
India, the taste is the same, but the habits different; a sketch of
which we furnish from our Old Indian. The carpenter, she tells us,
while planing the plank, which he holds between his toes, amuses
himself by talking to his parrot.
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