174 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



half a dozen or so of these things, the indigenous moorgee\s 

 seized with a violent ambition to hatch them. From that 

 time forth she will appropriate other hens' eggs wherever 

 she finds them ; in default of these she will incubate a 

 corner of the hen-house, and, if you shut her out, she will 

 sit dhitrna at the door. Plunging her into water five times 

 a day does not damp her philoprogenitiveness. The cook 

 sticks a long feather in her nose, and, when she has worn 

 the ornament for a few weeks, it is supposed to turn her 

 mind off incubation. Even the moorgee, however, is acted 

 upon to some extent by good upbringing and generous 

 fare. It improves her size, and gives her a comfortable 

 motherly look quite foreign to the bird in its natural state. 

 I keep a few of these civilized specimens for hatching and 

 rearing purposes. Pedro, the cook, also maintains a small 

 establishment of them on his own account, and, so far from 

 suffering by my competition, he seems to reap a double 

 advantage from it. In the first place, his fowls cost him 

 nothing for food, and, in the second, explain it how you will, 

 the chickens he rears have all the qualities of my best hens. 

 It does seem strange that the offspring of a skinny little 

 dirt-coloured moorgee should be the very image of a Dork- 

 ing just imported from England, the pride of my poultry- 



