LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OP A NATURALIST. 



129 



in one hole : the others were imprisoned singly, 

 and the holes were tightly plugged up. The 

 result of these experiments was, a conclusion that 

 toads cannot live a year excluded totally from 

 atmospheric air, and that they cannot survive two 

 years, if entirely prevented from obtaining food. 



But let us, before we depart, look into the 

 reptile-house on a warm summer night. We 

 enter with a dark lanthorn. The light is no 

 sooner unveiled, than it seems to have a Prome- 

 thean effect on the statue-like forms that were so 

 still in the morning Now the scene is changed ; 

 now all is action, terrible action ; and we behold 

 the monstrous constricting serpents, and the hor- 

 rible poisonous snakes, and the uncouth lizards, 

 writhing, coiling, creeping, running, and pushing 

 against the transparent walls of their crystal 

 prison, till the nervous anxiety of some tempera- 

 ments may be pardoned for huddling up to the 

 keeper, and inquiring, with bated breath, whether 

 the glass is python and boa-constrictor proof? 



March 27. The rain it raineth every day. 

 The peck of dust, worth a king's ransom, will 

 hardly be forthcoming, and the farmer begins to 

 be uneasy about his oats. The garden in the 

 Regent's Park is a swamp. Both the great and 

 smaller tortoise in the ostrich-house are dead, as I 

 feared. A small one that buries itself two or 

 three feet deep in the earth, exposed to all the 

 skyey influences, does well. Hippo is flourishing, 

 and now has clover-chaff tea, with the boiled chaff 

 as a change of diet. He drinks the tea, and then 

 eats the sop. His tank in the open air is advanc- 

 ing rapidly towards completion. The beautiful 

 crested pigeons,* with their hybrid young one, 

 are in fine condition. On the 8th September, in 

 the last year, I found Goura Victorias on her nest, 

 with her young one able to fly. On that day it 

 was five weeks old. The male bird, Goura coro- 

 nata, better known as " the great Amboyna 

 pigeon," which belongs to her majesty, was 

 strutting about on the ground. His productive 

 alliance with the species which bears our gracious 

 queen's name, is worthy of notice, particularly 

 when the difference of climate is taken into the 

 account. The egg there was only one from 

 which the hybrid sprung, was sat on twenty-eight 

 days before the young bird was hatched, by both 

 parents ; but the male was most assiduous and the 

 best nurse. 



An egg was laid and hatched in 1849, but the 

 young one died a day or two after its exclusion. 

 The birds showing a disposition to sit in 1850, 

 the cover of a basket was placed upon the angle 

 of a stout, forked pole, in the great aviary ; and a 

 few birch twigs furnished to them. Out of these 

 rough materials they made a nest. They sat 

 side by side. The male always sat with his head 

 fronting the spectator, or nearly so, as if he was 

 keeping watch, and the female with hers exactly 

 in the opposite direction, so that the head of the 

 cwk was parallel to the tail of the hen. The 



* Goura coronata and Goura Victorias. 



young one was fed from the crops and mouths of 

 both parents. 



And here we cannot but feel with John Hun- 

 ter, who discovered the curious organization in 

 the dove kind, which enables the parents to sup- 

 port their young with the curd-like contents of 

 their crops from their own bodies, in short, as 

 the mammalia do in the early stages of the exist- 

 ence of their offspring that the nourishment of 

 animals admits, perhaps, of as much variety in 

 the mode by which it is to be performed, as 

 any circumstance connected with their economy, 

 whether we consider their numerous tribes, the 

 different stages through which every animal 

 passes, or the food adapted to each in their dis- 

 tinct conditions and situations. The food fitted 

 for one stage of life is rejected at another. 



Animal life (as Hunter observes) may be 

 divided into three states, or stages : the first com- 

 prehending the production of the animal and its 

 growth in the fetal state ; the second commencing 

 when it emerges from that state by what is called 

 the birth, but leaving it for a time, either medi- 

 ately or immediately dependent on the parent for 

 support ; the third when the animal is able to act 

 for itself. As a general proposition, it may be 

 laid down that the first and third stages are com- 

 mon to all animals ; but some classes fishes and 

 spiders, for instance pass directly from the first 

 to the third, having no intermediate stage. 



The great physiologist then notices the infinite 

 variety in which Nature provides for the support 

 of the young in the second stage of animal life, 

 and that brings him to the statement of his dis- 

 covery. He tells us, and tells us truly, that the 

 young pigeon, like the young quadruped, till it is 

 capable of digesting the common food of its kind, 

 is fed with a substance secreted for that purpose 

 by the parent ; not, as in the mammalia, by the 

 female alone, but by the male also, and perhaps 

 more abundantly than by the female. 



Every person who has kept parrots, maccaws, 

 and birds generally of that family, must have 

 noticed the power possessed by them of throwing 

 up the contents of the crop, and feeding each 

 other. Hunter, in common with others, saw a 

 cock paroquet regularly feed his hen, by first 

 filling his own crop, and supplying her thence 

 from his beak ; and he notices what every observer 

 who has kept such birds must have remarked 

 namely, that when they are very fond of the per- 

 son who feeds and attends upon them, they per- 

 form the action of throwing up food, and often do 

 it. The cock pigeon, when he caresses the hen, 

 goes through the same forms of action as when he 

 feeds his young ; but Hunter adds, that he does 

 not know if at this time he throws up anything 

 from the crop. I have observed a similar action, 

 during the breeding season in rooks ; and I have 

 reason to believe that the cocks feed the hens 

 while they are sitting, as well as the young, with 

 food saved in a kind of gular pouch under the 

 lower mandible, but I do not know whether they 

 feed either the hens or the young with food which 



