THE POULTRY KIND. 159 



ing above twenty or thirty miles from home. As 

 their food is replete with moisture, it enables 

 them to live upon these dry plains, where there 

 are scarcely any springs of water, a long time 

 without drinking. Besides this, nature has given 

 the males an admirable magazine for their secu- 

 rity against thirst. This is a pouch, the entrance 

 of which lies immediately under the tongue, and 

 capable of holding near seven quarts of water. 

 This is probably filled upon proper occasions, to 

 supply the hen when sitting, or the young before 

 they can fly. 



Like all other birds of the poultry kind, they 

 change their mates at the season of incubation, 

 which is about the latter end of summer. They 

 separate in pairs if there be a sufficiency of fe- 

 males for the males ; but when this happens to 

 be otherwise, the males fight until one of them 

 falls. In France, they often find some of those 

 victims to gallantry dead in the fields, and no 

 doubt are not displeased at the occasion. 



They make their nests upon the ground, only 

 just scraping a hole in the earth, and sometimes 

 lining it with a little long grass or straw. There 

 they lay two eggs only, almost of the size of a 

 goose egg, of a pale olive brown, marked with 

 spots of a darker colour. They hatch for about 

 five weeks, and the young ones run about as 

 soon as they are out of the shell. 



The bustards assemble in flocks in the month 

 of October, and keep together till April. In 

 winter, as their food becomes more scarce, they 

 support themselves indiscriminately by feeding 



