252 FOREIGN FINCHES IN CAPTIVITY. 



one expected to see the combatants emerge in a ragged, bleeding, and 

 half dead condition, out they would pop, as smooth and trim as though 

 they had been engaged in preening one another's feathers, faultless in 

 plumage. One would now descend to the seed pan to feed, and the 

 other would sit on the perch and sing. 



Of course I soon discovered that I had two cock birds, so I wrote 

 to Mr. Abrahams to send me a pair. With the latter there was no 

 trouble, excepting that they would pluck out their feathers to add to 

 the nest. They had plenty of nesting materials, but often, when I 

 wondered that they never hatched their eggs, I have taken down the 

 box and discovered that it contained nothing but a little dirt and four 

 or five dried up and partly incubated or broken eggs. At last, in 

 1893, they brought up one youngster, its upper surface entirely pearl- 

 grey, its under parts white, beak and legs flesh-pink : at the first 

 moult the grey wholly disappeared. 



About midsummer, so far as I can remember, I turned this young 

 bird into my Weaver aviary, where I had a single fine cock bird of 

 the grey (or wild) type ; the two quickly made friends, and though I 

 subsequently turned in my two unpaired white males, the young white 

 female stuck to her first choice. On the 3rd February, 1894, I heard 

 the cries of young birds in my Weaver aviary, and soon discovered 

 that the pair of Java Sparrows was bringing up a family : three weeks 

 later five young birds left the nest, one being coloured like an ordinary 

 wild bird in its nestling plumage, with black beak and all complete, 

 two somewhat paler, with partly black beaks, and two resembling the 

 young plumage of their mother grey and white, with rosy beaks and 

 legs. About three days later, my pair of white Java Sparrows were 

 heard feeding a youngster, which left the nest three weeks later and 

 resembled a wild bird in its first plumage. 



Now it seems to me that when birds go to nest, lay and hatch 

 out, without one's knowledge ; and bring up a family of five sturdy 

 youngsters on paddy-rice, and the soft food put into the aviary for the 

 benefit of a Liothrix ; they can hardly be said to be difficult tb breed. 



The presence of Liothrix luteus in my Weaver aviary, might have 

 been expected to be prejudicial to the rearing of any young birds, on 

 account of the proneness of that Accentor to rob nests of their eggs : 

 nevertheless, I have reared Canaries in that aviary, although the eggs 

 were often uncovered, immediately below the branch on which he 

 perched. 



After the young birds in the Weaver aviary had left the nest, I 

 cleaned out the nest-box, and gave fresh nesting material ; but, so far 



