28 Stray Notes


When the chicks grow as large as the chick of a domestic fowl, we

stop heating the bedroom, except on cold or wet days. When they

change their down to feathers the chicks are treated in the same manner

as the parent birds. They mature at the end of three months. In this

way the Japanese easily propagate their Quail families from a small

stock, and obtain in a short time many eggs to eat and birds to give

them song. The eggs are very good to eat when put in soup or jelly,

boiled, and also fresh. I find the fresh, uncooked egg nicer than the

hen's egg, since it is richer, although not so strong as the duck's egg.

Some persons are over confident that Quail's eggs have more

nourishment than the hen's, and in the olden times the Japanese

thought them a good medicine for a paralytic.


The flesh of the Quail fed on soft food is not good for eating purposes.

They must be fed upon seeds and grains some weeks before being used

for the table. Then the flesh is very delicious.



STRAY NOTES


Breeding the Kagu. — Our member Mr. G. A. Heumann, writing

from his home in New South Wales, tells of the successful breeding of

the Kagu in his aviaries. When he wrote in November the young bird

was nine weeks old, and still being fed by its parents, who were most

attentive to its needs, one or other being always with it. The young

bird, he says, always runs between its parents, and unlike most chicks

which follow their mother, the young Kagu makes its parents follow it.


The Amethyst Starling. — The Zoological Society has received

a beautiful specimen of the South African form of the Amethyst

Starling (Pholidauges leucogaster verreauxi), presented by its corre-

sponding member, Dr. Harold Miller, Superintendent of the Zoological

Gardens at Durban. The Society has only once before possessed an

Amethyst Starling, a specimen of the typical form from West Africa

presented by Dr. Hopkinson, but these are not the only ones that have

been imported. Mr. Hamlyn had some four or five specimens in one

of his South African consignments some few months ago, which were,

I believe, bought by Mons. Delacour. Amethyst Starlings are some of

the most beautiful of the Glossy Starlings, the whole of the upper surface



