SECRETARY'S REPORT. 107 



ing and growth of this bird during a period of thirty-two days, 

 commencing with the 5th of June. The following is the sub- 

 stance of this report : — 



When caught, the two were quite young, their tail feathers 

 being less than an inch in length, and the weight of each about 

 twenty-five pennyweights, less than half the weight of the full- 

 grown birds ; both were plump and vigorous, and had evidently 

 been very recently turned out of the nest. He began feeding 

 them with earth-worms, giving three to each bird that night. 

 The second day he gave them ten worms each, which they ate 

 ravenously. Thinking this beyond what their parents could 

 naturally supply them with, he limited them to this allowance. 

 On the third day he gave them eight worms each in the fore- 

 noon, but in the afternoon he found one becoming feeble, and it 

 soon lost its strength, refused food, and died. On opening it, he 

 found the crop, gizzard and intestines entirely empty, and con- 

 cluded, therefore, that it died from want of sufficient food, the 

 effect of hunger being increased, perhaps, by tlic cold, as the 

 thermometer was about sixty degrees. 



The other bird, still vigorous, he put in a warmer place, and 

 increased its food, giving it the third day fifteen worms, on the 

 fourth day twenty-four, on the fifth twenty-five, on the sixth 

 thirty, and on the seventh thirty-one worms. They seemed 

 insufficient, and the bird appeared to be losing plumpness and 

 weight. He began to weigh both the bird and its food, and the 

 results were given in a tabular form. On the fifteenth day he 

 tried a small quantity of raw meat, and finding it readily eaten, 

 increased it gradually, to the exclusion of worms. With it the 

 bird ate a large quantity of earth and gravel, and drank freely 

 after eating. By the table, it appears that though the food was 

 increased to forty worms, weighing twenty pennyweiglits, on the 

 eleventh day, the weight of the bird rather fell off; and it was 

 not until the fourteenth day, when he ate sixty-eight worms, or 

 thirty-four pennyweights, that he began to increase. On this 

 day the weight of the bird was twenty-four pennyweights ; he 

 therefore ate forty-one per cent, more than his own weight in 

 twelve hours, weighing after it twenty-nine pennyweights, or 

 fifteen per cent, less than the food he had eaten in that time. 

 The length of these worms, if laid end to end, would be about 

 fourteen feet, or ten times the length of the intestines. 



