172 THE GUINEA FOWL. 



also, if possible, from a place where only a single 

 pair is kept. 



Their amours are conducted with the most strict 

 decorum and privacy. The cock, however, is properly 

 polite and attentive to his own hen, in public, walking 

 very close by her side, so as to touch her wings with 

 his own, offering her tit-bits, now and then a worm, 

 or a grain of corn ; he has also a habit of running 

 very quick for a few steps, and then walking affectedly 

 on tiptoe, with a mincing air, like the dandy in a 

 Christmas pantomime, setting up his back and in- 

 creasing his apparent height. These latter symptoms 

 are less evident in youth, when it is necessary to make 

 the selection, and the call note will be found the safest 

 guide. He attends his own hen to the nest, waits for 

 her close at hand, till she has made her contribution 

 to the treasury already there ; and will occasionally 

 betray the situation of the secret hoard, by his extreme 

 solicitude in announcing the approach of intruders. 



LAYING. 



OF all known birds, this, perhaps, is the most pro- 

 lific of eggs. Week after week and month after 

 month see little or no intermission of the daily deposit. 

 Even the process of moulting is sometimes insufficient 

 to draw off the nutriment the creature takes to make 

 feathers instead of eggs. As the body of a good cow 

 is a distillery for converting all sorts of herbage into 

 milk, and nothing else, or as little else as possible, so 

 the body of the Gruinea hen is a most admirable machine 

 for producing eggs out of insects, vegetables, garbage, 

 or grain. 



Eggs of the Guinea fowl are occasionally produced 

 covered with wrinkles, as if the shell had shrunk in 

 the process of hardening. These sometimes are con- 

 fined to one end, (the smaller,) and sometimes extend 

 over the whole surface. They are evidently the re- 

 sult of weakness or over-exertion of the egg organs, 

 appearing in young and healthy birds onl y at the close 



