A magpie belonging to a barber in Rome, could imitate very perfectly almost everything it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be sounded before the shop, and for a day or two afterward the magpie was quite mute, and seemed sad and melancholy. All who knew it supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned it as to rob it at once of both voice and hearing.

But this was not the case, as very soon appeared. The bird had all this time been studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets; and when at last master of it, the magpie, to the astonishment of all its friends, suddenly broke its long silence by a perfect imitation of the flourish of trumpets it had heard; repeating with the greatest exactness all the repetitions, stops, and changes. The learning of this lesson, however, so exhausted the magpie's brain that it forgot everything it had known before.