CHAPTER XXVIII. 



I HIS is neither as pretty nor as large a bird as the 

 preceding, but is blessed with a much more amiable 

 disposition. I had a pair of them once for a little 

 while, and can give them an excellent character as 

 far as my experience with them went. Certainly they 

 never made any attempt to nest, and that is the crucial 

 time for testing their temper, so that it is possible they 

 might, in the end, have turned out to be as disagreeable 

 as their more brilliantly attired relations, for the Scaly- 

 breast is not conspicuously handsome. 



His general colour is vivid grass-green, but the 

 breast- feathers, or, to speak more correctly, some of 

 them, are bordered with a bright band of rich Canary- 

 yellow, a circumstance from which these birds derive 

 their specific name, for these yellow markings give 

 a somewhat scaly appearance to that portion of their 

 body: the under wing-coverts are red, and the flights 



