AND OTHER BIRDS 169 



after a little, seems to proceed less from hope 

 tlian from mere inability to cease. In that 

 attitude and with that cry, for minutes together, 

 they beseech, with the iteration of a litany, their 

 mother to hear them. When perhaps the limit 

 of endurance has been reached, or when, as I 

 think more probable, she merely requires a 

 change of position, she will proceed, without so 

 much as a glance or touch, to sit on them. The 

 whining ceases at once, but still from beneath 

 her, like the limbs of the princes smothered in 

 the Tower, a long neck here and another there 

 will dart at intervals. Then all is quiet, the 

 observer feels that their agonies are over, and 

 that life must be extinct. At last she sits 

 enthroned on her brood, complacent and cool, 

 and about as emotional, as one of those dish 

 covers representing in cheap ware, a broody hen. 

 When about to feed the young the parent bird 

 stands upright and at full height. With her 

 mouth held high above the excited chicks, she 

 begins to open it more and more widely; then 

 in one long uninterrupted, unspasmodic retch, it 

 is lowered until the chicks head and half of the 

 chick's neck disappear in the cavernous reser- 

 voir. Considerable assistance seems to be 

 given to quite young birds, for they are pegged 

 down on the nest in most murderous fashion. 

 Sometimes the little one would emerge half 

 choked with some gruesome morsel too large for 

 it, and which would then be re-absorbed by the 

 thrifty parent. When the little fish, half 

 digested, came up too freely and fell, wasted, 

 over the edge of the nest, the old bird could never 

 abstain from a sudden start and a forward 

 movement as if to save them. 



