I855-] FEATHERS SKELETONS. 47 



would beg a chicken with exact age stated, about a week or fort- 

 night old ! to be sent in a box by post, if you could have the heart 

 to kill one ; and secondly, would let me pay postage . . . Indeed, 

 I should be very glad to have a nestling common pigeon sent, 

 for I mean to make skeletons, and have already just begun 

 comparing wild and tame ducks. And I think the results 

 rather curious,* for on weighing the several bones very care- 

 fully, when perfectly cleaned the proportional weights of the 

 two have greatly varied, the foot of the tame having largely 

 increased. How I wish I could get a little wild duck of a 

 week old, but that I know is almost impossible. 



With respect to ourselves, I have not much to say ; we 

 have now a terribly noisy house with the whooping cough, 

 but otherwise are all well. Far the greatest fact about myself 

 is that I have at last quite done with the everlasting barnacles. 

 At the end of the year we had two of our little boys very ill 

 with fever and bronchitis, and all sorts of ailments. Partly 

 for amusement, and partly for change of air, we went to 

 London and took a house for a month, but it turned out 

 a great failure, for that dreadful frost just set in when we 

 went, and all our children got unwell, and E. and I had 

 coughs and colds and rheumatism nearly all the time. We 

 had put down first on our list of things to do, to go and 

 see Mrs. Fox, but literally after waiting some time to see 

 whether the weather would not improve, we had not a day 

 when we both could go out. 



I do hope before very long you will be able to manage 

 to pay us a visit. Time is slipping away, and we are 

 getting oldish. Do tell us about yourself and all your large 

 family. 



I know you will help me if you can with information 



* " I have just been testing prac- find the tame-duck wing ought, ac- 



tically what disuse does in reducing cording to scale of wild prototype, 



parts ; I have made skeleton of to have its two wings 360 grains in 



wild and tame duck (oh, the smell weight, but it has it only 317." 



of well-boiled, high duck ! !) and I A letter to Sir J. D. Hooker, 1855. 



