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of the full-grown bird ; both were plump and vigorous, and had 

 evidently been very recently turned out of the nest. lie began 

 feeding them with earth-worms, giving three to each bird, that 

 night ; the 2d day he gave them ten worms each, which they 

 eat ravenously ; thinking this beyond what their parents could 

 naturally supply them with, he limited them to this allowance. 

 On the 3d day, he gave them eight worms each in the forenoon ; 

 but in the afternoon he found one becoming feeble, and it soon 

 lost its strength, refused food, and died ; on opening it, he found 

 the crop, gizzard, and intestines entirely empty, and concluded 

 therefore that it had died from want of sufficient food, the effect 

 of hunger being perhaps increased by cold, as the thermometer 

 was about 60^. The other bird, still vigorous, he put in a 

 warmer place, and increased its food, giving it the 3d day fifteen 

 worms, on the 4th day twenty-four, on the 5th twenty-five, on 

 the Gtli thirty, and on the 7th thirty-one worms. They seemed 

 insufficient, and the bird appeared to be losing plumpness and 

 weight ; he began then to weigh both the bird and its food, and 

 the results were given in a tabular form. On the 15th day he 

 tried a small quantity of raw meat, and, finding it readily eaten, 

 increased it gradually to the exclusion of worms ; with it the bird 

 eat a large quantity of earth and gravel, and drank freely after 

 eating. By the table it appears that though the food was in- 

 creased to forty worms, weighing twenty dwt. on the 11th day, 

 the weight rather fell off; and it was not until the 14th day, 

 when he eat sixty-eight worms, or thirty-four dwt., that he be^an 

 to increase — on this day the weight of the bird was twenty-four 

 dwt. ; he therefore eat forty-one per cent, more than his own 

 weight in twelve hours, weighing after it twenty-nine dwt., or 

 fifteen per cent, less than the food he had eaten in that time ; the 

 length of these worms, if laid end to end, would be about fourteen 

 feet, or ten times the length of the intestines. To meet the 

 objection that the earth-worm contains but a small amount of 

 solid nutritious matter, on the 27th day he was fed exclusively 

 on clear beef, in quantity twenty-three dwt. ; at night the bird 

 weighed fifty-two dwt., but little more than twice the amount of 

 flesh consumed during the day, not taking into account the water 

 and earth swallowed. This presents a wonderful contrast with 

 the amount of food required by the cold-blooded vertebi-ates, 



