156 ‘HABITS OF BIRDS. 
ing up a brood of chickens like a hen, clucking, of 
them, feeding them, and brooding them under his — 
wings, with as much care and tendemess as their 
dams are wont to do.”* This leads us to the very | 
curious subject of training capons to perform the © 
office of a mother, which was practised as early. as 
the sixteenth century. 
In order to train a capon for this purpese, we are 
instructed by Baptista Porta,in his curious book on — 
Natural Magic, to make him so tame that he will 
take food out of the hand, then about eventide to 
pluck the feathers off his breast, to irritate the bare 
skin by rubbing it with nettles, and then to put the 
chickens to him. They will naturally huddle under 
him, and, by rubbing with their heads, allay the itch- 
ing caused by the nettles; and, upon repeating this 
for two or three nights, he will gradually take an 
affection for the chickens, and attend to them likea 
mother. The author thinks it may probably be on 
the principle of mutual distress producing mutual 
sympathy, that the querulous chirp of the chickens 
may make him, while in pain himself, desirous of 
allaying their misery. A capon once accustomed to 
this office, will not abandon it, but, when one brood 
is grown up, another of newly-hatched chickens 
may be put to him, and he will be as kind to them, 
and take as much care of them, as of the first, and 
so in succession. 
The feeling of tenderness for the young broods 
of other birds, in whatever way it may be supposed 
to originate, has been exemplified in several very 
striking instances, both among birds and other ani- 
mals. ‘Inthe month of May,” says M. de Buffon, 
**a young henbird was brought to me which was 
not able to feed without assistance. I caused her 
to be educated; and she was hardly fledged when 
I received from another place a nest of three oF 
* Ray’s Willoughby, p. 166. 
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