292 RIVERBY 



but he laid aside the cunning of his craft in deal- 

 ing with this question of these egg-shells. 



The bending in, or the indented appearance of the 

 edge of the shells was owing to the fact that the thin 

 paper-like skin that lines the interior of the shell 

 had dried and shrunken, and had thus drawn the 

 edges of the shell inward. The cut was made by 

 the beak of the young bird, probably by turning its 

 head from right to left; one little point it could not 

 reach, and this formed the hinge of the lid I have 

 spoken of. Is it at all probable that if the mother 

 bird had done this work she would have left this 

 hinge, and left it upon every egg, since the hinge 

 was of no use ? The complete removal of the cap 

 would have been just as well. 



Neither is it true that the parent bird shoves its 

 young from the nest when they are ready to fly, 

 unless it be in the case of doves and pigeons. Our 

 small birds certainly do not do this. The young 

 birds will launch out of their own motion as soon as 

 their wings will sustain them, and sometimes before. 

 There is usually one of the brood a little more 

 forward than its mates, and this one is the first to 

 venture forth. In the case of the bluebird, chick- 

 adee, high-hole, nuthatch, and others, the young 

 are usually a day or two in leaving the nest. 



The past season I was much interested in seeing 

 a brood of chickadees, reared on my premises, ven- 

 ture upon their first flight. Their heads had been 

 seen at the door of their dwelling a cavity in the 

 limb of a pear-tree at intervals for two or three 



