218 LONG-TAILED SENEGAL DOVE. [CHAP. vi. 



they gradually lost a little of their wildness, they ac- 

 quired nothing of tameness, much less of domestic 

 attachment. They were of opposite sexes, yet they 

 quarrelled incessantly. They always reminded me of 

 those miserable unions in which it is easier to lead the 

 horse to water than to make him drink. The male was 

 the smaller and weaker bird, and he was perpetually 

 hen pecked, till he was worried into, not his grave, but 

 the bird-stuffer's glass-case. 



Another pair were transferred to a friend, who wrote 

 thus of them : " The Passengers are well, and exqui- 

 sitely beautiful ; but beyond this, and the curious G rebe- 

 like fashion of resting on their perch, (how they enjoy 

 a sloping one !) there is really nothing to note. They 

 are the most strangely uninteresting birds I ever came 

 across, never uttering a note, or being seen to eat, except 

 the hen one day, and which she seemed heartily ashamed 

 of being caught doing. They sit up as if they had a 

 wire drawn through them, and I fear their tempers are 

 not good and trusty." H. H. 



Audubon well describes the curious motion of the 

 neck in these birds when they are walking along the 

 ground, and pictures the effect of their wheeling flight 

 when in flocks, the mass now appearing all blue, and 

 then all sunny red. This is caused by the simultaneous 

 exposure to view of the bosoms of the birds, which in 

 the males are of a bright vinous cherry-colour. 



THE LONG-TAILED SENEGAL DOVE is equally propa- 

 gable in an aviary, unmanageable in a cage, and unsus- 

 ceptible of domestication. A pair liberally sent from 

 Knowsley at the same time with the Passengers, still 

 survive ; but though of opposite sexes, they long kept 

 up such fierce engagements, that they were obliged to be 



