The further study of it will be exceedingly interesting.
Meantime I will go off on a far expedition among the forests of
the north and make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be
another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it
has company of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will
muzzle this one first.
THREE MONTHS LATER.--It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have
had no success. In the mean time, without stirring from the
home estate, she has caught another one! I never saw such luck.
I might have hunted these woods a hundred years, I never would
have run across that thing.
NEXT DAY.--I have been comparing the new one with the old one,
and it is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed.
I was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she
is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so I have
relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake. It would
be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away.
The old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot,
having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much,
and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree.
I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot;
and yet I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been
everything else it could think of since those first days when it
was a fish.
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