MOTHER AND CHICK 277 



degrees. One kept where it was, at the bottom of 

 the nest, the other crawled to the edge and lay with 

 its head partly over it, as though ready to take the 

 water, which, no doubt, both would have done, 

 had I been able to come nearer. Yet, in all 

 probability, as the pool lay in a deep hollow, 

 seldom visited, I was the first human being they 

 had either of them ever seen. The third egg was, 

 as yet, unhatched ; but coming, again, on the follow- 

 ing day, the nest was entirely empty, and I now 

 found pieces of the egg-shells, lying high and dry 

 upon the bank of the pool, to which they had 

 evidently been carried by the parent birds. In the 

 same way, it will be remembered, the moorhen that 

 destroyed its eggs, walked with them through the 

 water, to the bank, on which it placed three out of 

 the five two at some distance away. 



Though so precocious, yet the young moorhens 

 are, for some time, fed by their dams. I have seen 

 them run to them, with their wings up, over a raft 

 of water-plants, and then crouch and lift their heads 

 to one of their parents, from whom they received 

 a modicum of weed. Or they will sit down beside 

 their mother, and look up in her face in a pretty, 

 beseeching way. When frightened or disturbed, 

 they utter a little wheezy, querulous note, like 

 "kew-ee, kew-ee," which has a wonderful volume 

 of sound in it, for such little things. The mother 

 soon appears, and gives a little purring croon, after 

 which the cries cease ; or she may answer them with 

 a cry something like that of a partridge. She calls 

 them to her with a clucking note, uttered two or 

 three times together, and repeated at longer or 



