In effect, when the oldest men now living on the island were little boys, they tell me that Methuselah was already a venerable and much-venerated parrot.

He must certainly have outlived all the rest of his race by at least the best part of three-quarters of a century.

For the islanders themselves not infrequently live, by unanimous consent, to be over a hundred." "I remember to have read somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible then by any living person.

If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that particular bird must have lived to be nearly a hundred and fifty." "That is so, monsieur," the Frenchman answered.

"I remember the case well, and have often recalled it.