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a pair of Pagoda Mynahs, and the other a pair of American

Mocking-birds. All these have raised families, so you may

guess I have had my hands full.


As the summer drew on, the Andamans soon showed that

they intended to increase and multiply, and replenish the earth.


I one morning saw one of them carrying a straw into the

central log; so I took the hint and supplied some nice likely

nesting material. They soon took the hint, and from time to

time I saw an oddment of straw sticking out of the hole, so that

I knew that things were going merrily as the proverbial marriage

bell. If I showed any undue interest by looking at the log from

a distance, a warning note was soon uttered, which sounded

very like that ‘wicked little cuss word’ Frenchmen are so fond

of— sacre —very much drawn out. The hen only did the sitting,

and, as far as I could tell, she sat about thirteen days. No doubt

readers of an enquiring turn of mind will want to know what

the pretty eggs were like. I regret that I can furnish no

information on this point, as I knew that to look would be as

much as the nest was worth ; and later, as events proved, the

colour of the eggs was put beyond my power to guess, as they

all hatched. If, as is the usual custom, the egg shells were

carried out, I never had the luck to find them, as no doubt they were

dropped in the long coarse grass, and so escaped my notice ( e ).

The youngsters were fed assiduously by both parents, they rose

early and late took rest; but they did not carry out the Davidic

maxim, by “ eating the bread of carefulness,” for they evidently

believed that the good of all the land of Egypt was theirs. The

way mealworms disappeared was a caution to rattlesnakes !


Guide books tell us that mealworms are too ‘stimulating/

that if so fed, sooner or later the unnatural parents throw their

unhappy offspring out of the nest and begin nesting again. I

often think of those words of Mrs. Glegg in “The Mill on the

Floss.” “ Mr. Tulliver doesn’t want to hear your opinion or

mine neither. There’s folks in this world as know better than

everybody else.” That is my candid opinion of the advocates of

non-mealworm treatment. I have had a fairly large experience

and no mean measure of success, and I say without hesitation

that I owe it all to disregarding such advice and following the

teaching of Nature.



(e). Since the above was written the Andamans have gone to nest again. I have

examined the eggs. They are deepish blue in colour, long and oval in shape.—C. D. F.



