122 MUTTON BIRDS 



that made her husband nervous, and easily con- 

 doned a fault leaning so much to virtue's side. 

 Of the alternatives hazarded, to account for the 

 rejection of the grub, I believe the latter, that it 

 was unsuitable, is the more likely to be correct. 



In the absorption of watching, I put my face 

 too near the birds, and when for an instant both 

 left the nest, the jar of their departure 

 roused the chick. At once he reared his neck 

 erect, opened wide his gape, and when touched 

 by my finger tip was perfectly anxious to swallow 

 it. Certainly, therefore, he was hungry, and had 

 the grub been offered he would have taken it. 



During this little domestic episode, and 

 whilst I was watching the details of that Fern 

 Bird's nest and comparing it with a human 

 home under like circumstances, only an utter 

 want of imagination could have failed to remark 

 the essential similarity of situation in the two 

 male animals, the man and the male Fern Bird, 

 both so entirely out of their true spheres of use- 

 fulness, no longer the glories of the universe, but 

 mere sheepish appendages of the female sex. 



Without attempting to undervalue the cock's 

 affection for the nestling, I cannot but suspect 

 the motive of his rather ostentatious and 

 pressing gifts of food. The keen desire of the 

 little fellow to nourish the chick was, I fear in 

 part at least an effort to re-assert himself and 

 mark the proper domination, for a few hours 

 imperilled, of his sex. Knowing his value to 

 the full as all male birds do, it must have been 

 galling to feel how little he had to do with the 

 late affair, or at any rate, that his share in it had 

 happened so long ago as to have been probably 

 forgotten by the silly old hen. 



