244 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



These black fellows, however, are terrific looking, and I 

 think frighten the young birds. They certainly are not 

 agreeable to the white silky bantam ; for when we first 

 introduced them to her pen, and she began maternally 

 chuckling to her young charge to peg in while fortune 

 favoured, it somehow sadly happened that a pirate or 

 two of the lot managed to get up into what ladies would 

 term her "panniers," and so irritated or alarmed or 

 othei-wise incommoded the old lady, that in a frenzy she 

 hopped and flounced wildly about, unfortunately there- 

 by managing to kill two of the wee things of which 

 hitherto she had been so splendidly careful. She has 

 ever since evinced great alarm at being shown one at 

 all. And certainly they are ugly-looking fellows, and 

 when they sit as they do, if you arrest their course, as 

 if to show fight, our youngsters say it is to beg for their 

 lives ; they assuredly suggest to one that they would be 

 very awkward to sleep alongside, and might certainly 

 be expected to annoy the gizzard if swallowed in their 

 ferocity alive. 



In one pheasant's nest that we found in a hole beside 

 the river, a partridge had deposited two eggs. The 

 young ones, partridge and pheasant, broke shell the 

 same day. Now this is curious, as a fact of natural 

 history, inasmuch as there is a week's difference in the 

 incubation of the two birds. Can it be that the birds 

 calculate and have a common language, so that the 

 partridge finding herself possessed of a greater quantity 

 of eggs than she could well cover, lent a couple to her 

 neighbour whose stock was short ? Anyhow they are 

 hatched and feeding under one coop now upon the lawn. 



I have been obliged to turn the thorough-bred into a 

 brood mare. She never managed to precipitate the 



