BIRDS. 3G9 



ing their situation, till the calls of hunger break their repose, 

 and till they find it indispensably necessary to fill their magazine 

 for a fresh meal. Thus their life is spent between sleeping and 

 eating ; and our author adds, that they are as foul as they are 

 voracious, as they are every moment voiding excrements in heaps 

 as large as one's fist. 



The same indolent habits seem to attend them even in pre- 

 paring for incubation, and defending their young when excluded. 

 The female makes no preparation for her nest, nor seems to 

 choose any place in preference to lay in ; but drops her eggs on 

 the bare ground to the immber of five or six, and there continues 

 to hatch them. Attached to the place, without any desire of 

 defending her eggs or her young, she tamely sits, and suffers 

 them to be taken from under her. Now and then she just ven- 

 tures to peck, or to cry out when a person offers to beat her off. 



She feeds her young with fish macerated for some time in her 

 bag ; and when they cry, flies oft' for a new supply. Labat tells 

 us, that he took two of these when very young, and tied them by 

 the leg to a post stuck into the ground, where he had the plea- 

 sure of seeing the old one for several days come to feed them, 

 remaining with them the greatest part of the day, and spending 

 the night on the branch of a tree that hung over them. By these 

 means they were all three become so familiar, that they suffered 

 themselves to be handled ; and the young ones very kindly ac- 

 cepted whatever fish he offered them. These they always put 

 first into their bag, and then swallowed at their leisure. 



It seems, however, that they are but disagreeable and useless 

 domestics ; their gluttony can scarcely be satisfied ; their flesh 

 smells very rancid ; and tastes a thousand times worse than it 

 smells. The native Americans kill vast numbers ; not to eat, 

 for they are not fit even for the banquet of a savage ; but to con- 

 vert their large bags into jjurses and tobacco pouches. They 

 bestow no small pains in dressing the skin with salt and ashes, 

 rubbing it well with oil, and then forming it to their purpose. 

 It thus becomes so soft and pliant, that the Spanish women 

 sometimes adorn it with gold and embroidery to make work- 

 bags of. 



Yet with all the seeming habitudes of this bird, it is not en- 

 tirely incapable of instruction in a domestic state. Katiier Ilay- 

 mond assures us, that he lias seen one so tame and well cdu- 



