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make it are unacquainted with the nature of the species. In one

respect, in fact, to which I will refer later, the bird is actually

brighter than represented in the coloured plate. It is in cases

like this—but this is but a mild instance—that those who keep

the living bird are able to detect and observe the true habits of

a species in a way that is closed to the Cabinet Naturalist and

usually inaccessible to the Field Naturalist.


When my Pitta was left alone in the world, it became as

wild as the wildest Pitta in India ; and for some weeks I had the

gratification of studying the bird as it is in the wild state. It

had arrived at the conclusion—poor thing, it was not far wrong

perhaps—that I was the murderer or the something of its com¬

panions ; it most certainly connected me in its mind with their

disappearance, and looked upon me as a most dangerous charac¬

ter. At first it kept to the highest perches, flying about with

great power, and rarely descending to the ground. But the

safety of a Pitta lies not in its wings, as the bird knows well, but

in its cleverness in assimilating itself to its surroundings. It is

not a bird of the ground, as is generally stated, nor yet is it a

bird of the air. The flight is fairly powerful, up to a certain

point, and is straight like a Partridge’s but not nearly so noisy.

In comparatively open ground, it could rarely escape from a bird

of prey, and in the jungle would soon be destroyed, and become

extinct, if it were not that Nature has taught it how to hide its

bright colours and become inconspicuous. Not on the ground,

remember, but in some bush, some few feet from the ground,

when it spies a foe, it does not fly until it knows it has been

detected, but braces the feathers tight to the body, stoops and

leans straight forward pointing to the enemy, and offers a re¬

markably small and inconspicuous object to the view. The

bracing up of the feathers hides every bright speck, and the

stooping and pointing-forward position of the whole bod)'render

the red underparts wholly invisible. In the gloom of a forest, the

tiny fawn-brown speck, in the midst of a bush some 3—5 feet

from the ground, would be a most difficult object to detect. Half

the world would pass by within a few feet of the bird without

having a suspicion of its presence. When high up, on the other

hand, it usually flies when approached, as if conscious of its

inability to effectually hide itself. My bird has now become

fairly tame again, although still remarkably suspicious, and has

given up hiding; but when visitors come, although it does not

play ’possum, but wags his little tail about, it still habitually

braces itself up, and invariably faces the visitor, so that no bright



