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of the aviary somehow. What was my delight and astonishment,

after a long and careful search, to find her sitting hard on four

eggs. She was sitting so close that she even allowed me to pull

her off the eggs. (What a treasure this bird would be to some

of our members, tame and warranted to like being taken on and

off her eggs). She sat steadily, but, of course, with no result.

Just as she had done sitting I got the cock. Too late of course,

and a season gone.


Any intelligent man will understand that it was a situation

calculated to amuse the ungodly, but without any real fun in it.

I know I felt as melancholy as if I had been editing a comic

paper, but there are limits even to depression, and after the most

awful fit there surely comes the rebound, as certainly as day

follows night.


However, as the season advanced, I put out the cock with

the old hen, as she had not nested, thinking she was the most

likely of the two to do so. With the perversity of the male

creature, the cock did not approve of my selection. You re¬

member that when Alcides, having gone through all the fatigues

of life, took a bride in Olyunpus, he ought to have selected

Minerva, but he chose Hebe. So did my cock Many-Colour.

He evidently, like Jacob, preferred Rachel to Leah. He was

always seductively whistling through the wires and making love

to the younger and fairer lady ; and so, at last, I had to let

nature have her way, and transferred Leah from his side and

substituted Rachel. Leah did not take at all kindly to the

arrangement, and but for the dividing wires I would not have

been answerable for the consequences, as the police say’.


Nothing further happened last year in the way of breeding,

but the happy pair passed all the winter out of doors in the most

perfect health and contentment.


The Many-Colour, I may say in passing, is a very frugal

liver, and a plain and simple diet suits him admirably. All that

mine have in the way of food is Indian millet, canary seed, and

soft food mixture if they care to take it.


Many - Colours may be safely trusted with the tiniest

finches. This year’s breeding operations commenced very early.

It must have been early in February (bitter cold weather) that

the lieu disappeared into a log. I feared the result—unfertile

eggs. It proved I was right, for when she gave over sitting I

found five clear eggs in the nest.


After a very few days, my experienced eye saw that a

second batch of eggs was in preparation. Soon Mrs. Many-



