A FOSTER BROTHER^S KINDNESS. 



YOUNG Oriole was rescued 

 from the water where it had 

 evidently just fallen from 

 the nest. When taken 

 home it proved a ready 

 pet and was given full freedom of the 

 place. Some weeks later a nestling 

 from another brood was placed in the 

 same cage with the other. The new- 

 comer had not yet learned to feed him- 

 self, and like a baby as it was, cried 

 incessantly for food. The first captive 

 though but a fledgling himself, pro- 

 ceeded to feed the orphan with all the 

 tender solicitude of a parent. 



" It was irresistably cunning and 

 heartsome, too," says the narrator, W. 

 L. Dawson, in the Bidlftin^ '' to see the 

 bird select with thoughtful kindness, 

 a morsel of food and hop over toward 

 the clamoring stranger and drop it in 

 his mouth, looking at it afterward 

 with an air as much as to say, ' there, 

 baby, how did you like that ? ' This 

 trait was not shown by a chance exhi- 

 bition, but became a regular habit, 

 and was still followed when the older 

 bird had attained to fly catching. It 

 upset all ones notions about instinct 

 and made one think of a Golden Rule 

 for birds." 



A GOOSE THAT TAKES A HEN SAILING. 



The following remarkable instance 

 of the communication of ideas among 

 the lower animals is narrated by the 

 Rev. C. Otway : 



" At the flour mills of Tubberakeena, 

 near Clonmel, while in the possession 

 of the late Mr. Newbold, there was a 

 Goose, which by some accident was 

 left solitary, without mate or offspring, 

 gander or goslings. Now it happened, 

 as is common, that the miller's wife 

 had set a number of Duck eggs under 

 a hen, which in due time were incu- 

 bated ; and of course the ducklings, as 

 soon as they came forth, ran with nat- 

 ural instinct to the water, and the hen 

 was in a sad pucker — her maternity 

 urging her to follow the brood, and 

 her instinct disposing her to keep on 

 dry land. 



" In the meanwhile, up sailed the 

 Goose, and with a noisy gabble, which 

 certainly (being interpreted) meant, 

 ' Leave them to my care,' she swam 

 up and down with the ducklings, and 



when they were tired with their 

 aquatic excursion, she consigned them 

 to the care of the hen. 



" The next morning, down came 

 again the ducklings to the pond, and 

 there was the Goose waiting for them, 

 and there stood the hen in her great 

 flustration. On this occasion we are 

 not at all sure that the Goose invited 

 the hen, observing her maternal 

 trouble ; but it is a fact that she being 

 near the shore, the hen jumped on her 

 back, and there sat, the ducklings 

 swimming and the Goose and hen 

 after them, up and down the pond. 



" This was not a solitary event ; day 

 after day the hen was seen on board 

 the Goose, attending the ducklings up 

 and down, in perfect contentedness and 

 good humor — numbers of people com- 

 ing to witness thecircumstance, which 

 continued until the ducklings, coming 

 to days of discretion, required no longer 

 the joint guardianship of the Goose and 

 Hen," — Witness. 



194 



