FROM AN ANONYMOUS JOURNAL. 3 



lier; so that, when hungry it always came wheeling 

 and dashing to her side and began cooing in an absurdly 

 pitiable way. As the bird never objected to our manu- 

 pulating it as we liked, Janardan took advantage of its 

 trustful nature to give me some useful lessons on elemen- 

 tary ornithology. He would ask me to count the feathers 

 of its wings and tail, and to observe that the large wing 

 and tail feathers were overlapped by sets of smaller 

 feathers above and below. What a dunce I was not to 

 be able to answer that wings were used for flight. To 

 demonstrate this fact Janardan playfully tied up the quill 

 feathers with a piece of string and let it go. Oh no, it 

 could not fly ! When I asked him about the function of 

 the tail feathers, he in his usual pantomimic way told me 

 to find it out for myself by observing the flight of birds. 



The crop of the pigeon puzzled me much. I thought it 

 was its stomach, as I could feel the grains it ate, but my 

 juvenile wisdom could not solve the mystery of its being 

 situated at the breast. Janardan however set me right. 

 He explained to me that it was a bag formed by the 

 dilatation of the gullet or tube through which food passed- 

 into the stomach, and that it served as a reservoir for food 

 hastily taken. I have since learnt that it not only serves 

 as a reservoir but by its secretion moistens and softens 

 the food which consists mostly of grains of various kinds. 



