Nest-loxes and Nests. 107 



and sudden changes in the temperature, and nothing 

 kills them so soon as the exposure to a cold draught. 

 Too much heat is to be avoided as much as too little, 

 the former making the hens sickly, produces weakening 

 perspirations very injurious to their own health, as well 

 as causes their young to be weak and difficult to rear. 

 As we had no trees, or anything that could be taken as 

 an apology for one, two things were manifestly re 

 quired, viz., materials wherewith to make their nest, 

 and something wherein the nest might be made in. 

 We looked about, and saw, both in the market and in 

 the shop-windows of the dealers, pretty little wicker- 

 work baskets, a trifle larger than the panniers usually 

 placed on the back of a toy-jackass, with building 

 materials corresponding to their size. We were too 

 practical to be taken in with such toys, and abjured 

 them from the first with as much contempt as would a 

 true disciple of old Isaac the tempting flies and taking 

 gear usually found in a fashionable fishing-tackle shop 

 in town. In lieu thereof we had a number of wooden 

 boxes made, of the following proportions, viz,, three 

 and three quarter inches long, by three and a quarter 

 wide, and two deep, in fact, common kitchen soap- 

 boxes, the back finishing in a point, and having a long 

 hole so as to take on and off a hook placed in the wall 

 for that purpose. These were both neat in their 

 appearance, and commodious for the birds, requiring 

 indeed a little more material to fill them, but prevent- 

 ing the risk of the young birds falling out of their nest, 

 and coming to an untimely end, at the same time that 

 they were easy to exchange and keep clean. 



