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tell each other this joke in turn, and laugh unanimously. You may see the system in operation here. One bird will burst upon a few friends with the air of a breathless discoverer and a vast number of chuckles. He tells the ancestral joke, in confidence to jackass the second. Then the two scream and choke with delirious laughter, and the joke is passed on to jackass the third, and so forth—and fifth, and sixth—till every jackass is screaming for a minute together, till the regular amount of mutual admiration has been expended, and they they stop suddenly and cock their beaks demurely for the approbation of visitors.

For the laughing jackass's own sake, I wouldn't introduce him to a raven; because the jackass would be sure to repeat the joke to his new acquaintance, and the raven, a sardonic and superior joker, would be apt to deal savagely with him; and this more because of the badness of the joke than its age. I know a raven named Elijah (there would appear to have been some confusion of Scriptural history at his christening) who would be a bad subject for the laughing jackass's joke. He is not at the Zoo, but in private ownership, which is a great deal the worse in general devilment for the private owner, although he hasn't discovered it for himself yet. Elijah's chief delight, by the way, is to run loose in a flower garden or a conservatory, where the surroundings may be reduced to a salad in about five minutes. "Do you know why they call me a laughing jackass?" Dacelo gigantea might ask Elijah;