scout first, and a party of scouts afterwards; and when the
reconnoitring party returns and reports that there is no danger,
a second group of scouts is sent out to verify the first report,
before the whole band moves. With kindred species the cranes
contract real friendship; and in captivity there is no bird, save
the also sociable and highly intelligent parrot, which enters
into such real friendship with man. "It sees in man, not a
master, but a friend, and endeavours to manifest it," Brehm
concludes from a wide personal experience. The crane is in
continual activity from early in the morning till late in the
night; but it gives a few hours only in the morning to the task
of searching its food, chiefly vegetable. All the remainder of
the day is given to society life. "It picks up small pieces of
wood or small stones, throws them in the air and tries to catch
them; it bends its neck, opens its wings, dances, jumps, runs
about, and tries to manifest by all means its good disposition of
mind, and always it remains graceful and beautiful."(21) As it
lives in society it has almost no enemies, and though Brehm
occasionally saw one of them captured by a crocodile, he wrote
that except the crocodile he knew no enemies of the crane. It
eschews all of them by its proverbial prudence; and it attains,
as a rule, a very old age. No wonder that for the maintenance of
the species the crane need not rear a numerous offspring; it
usually hatches but two eggs. As to its superior intelligence, it
is sufficient to say that all observers are unanimous in
recognizing that its intellectual capacities remind one very much
of those of man.

The other extremely sociable bird, the parrot, stands, as
known, at the very top of the whole feathered world for the