152 NATURE STUDY. 



Hatching a Condor. 



As long ago as 1844, the Zoological Society of London 

 had received a pair of condors from the Andes in South 

 America. Thej^ were kept in a large cage in the menag- 

 erie in Regent's Park, and, singularly enough, proved very 

 disappointing to many who saw them. They were in reali- 

 ty fine, large birds, the old male measuring eleven feet in 

 the spread of his wings, and being four feet nine inches in 

 length. But there had been so many extravagant things 

 written about the condor that people expected to .see mon- 

 strous birds, many feet in length, and with wings expand- 

 ing twenty or thirty feet. 



One keen observer was not disappointed, however, and 

 he was our old friend Broderip, whose "Note-book" has 

 been drawn upon so frequently for the readers of Nature 

 vStudy. He watched the great birds da}' after day and 

 month after month, and wrote many pages about them in 

 that commonplace book of his from which the " Leaves " 

 were afterwards to be taken. 



The condors evidently felt that a cage was no place for 

 their children, if they had any ; so, although the female 

 laid several eggs, she never sat upon them. But the Zoo- 

 logical Society wanted a j-oung condor very much, and as 

 there were no artificial incubators in those days, such as 

 poultrymen use now, it was necessary to find a sort of step- 

 mother that would try to hatch a condor, and care for it 

 when hatched. Mr. Broderip, in his quaint way, tells how 

 this was successfully accomplished : 



At the tiniL- the present note was taken, the female condor in 

 the Regent's Park had laid seven eggs. The first was laid on the 

 4th of March, 1844; the second on the 29th of April of the same 

 year; the third on the 28th of February, 1845 ; the fourth on the 

 24th of April in that year ; the fifth on the 8th of February, 1846 ; 

 the sixth on the 3rd of April, 1046 ; and the seventh ou the 7th of 

 May, 1846. 



