NOTES. 407 



this out at first; but on watching her I saw that in the 

 corner was an oyster-shell, the white side ui^pcrmost, and 

 this she took great care of, and sat on it as an egg. If, when 

 she came off to feed, I displaced the shell, she always put it 

 back again underneath her, just as the common fowl would 

 do by an eo-n;. Havino- ascertained that she was sittinjx, 

 fearful that she might not sit the usual period, I took from 

 under a bantam five eggs that only wanted five days of 

 hatching, and placed them under her. She hatched them 

 all, and, on being put into a coop, reared the chickens after 

 the most approved fashion, keeping to her charge until 

 they grew so completely to maturity that they deserted her. 

 The second instance was in a larger aviary, in which I was 

 breeding from a cock-pheasant and bantam hens. I had 

 put three hybrids in the same aviary for safety, and one of 

 them took to sittincr. She hatched four or five chickens 

 from eggs put under her in the same Avay, and proved a 

 most excellent foster-mother. Although these hybrids now 

 are at large round my house, they never in that way have 

 attempted to sit ; it has only been in aviaries where they 

 were confined, and where, I am perfectly certain, they never 

 laid an egg. I see no reason why a mule should not lay, 

 because hens will lay without a male bird, though the ^gg 

 will come to nothing, but so far as my long experience goes 

 of these mules, I am induced to believe that they never bring 

 forth an egg under any circumstances. In breeding these 

 hybrids, not more than one egg in two or three hundred comes 

 to perfection, otherwise they w^ould make a beautiful varia- 

 tion to the bag in a day's shooting. They are very much in- 

 clined to stray, and what is fatal to their safety when they do 

 so, is, that they are just as incautious and tame to strangers 

 and in strange places, as they are to those who have reared 

 them, and, consequently, easily captured and killed. I have 

 four of them, who at the present time come to feed at the 

 drawing-room windov/, and one of them, a beautiful pied bird, 

 enters the room and feeds out of Mrs. Berkeley's hand. 



In a conversation on game, which I had with Mr. Shaw 

 Le Fevre, he told me that his keeper having found several 



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