THE ZooLocist—Aveust, 1872. 3159 
act. This merely shows how easily two observers, with equal 
opportunities for observation, may differ in their conclusions. 
The most satisfactory birds I have ever kept are betcherrygahs 
and redpolls ; the least so, quails and hawfinches: perfect content 
and uniform good spirits characterise the two former; painful 
timidity and restless anxiety to escape, the two latter. All the 
wagtails are pleasing inhabitants of an aviary, but they give youa 
deal of trouble; their food requires careful preparation, and indi- 
viduals of the same species are too pugnacious for comfort, too 
apt to worry and even to kill their brothers and sisters; in elegance 
of form and grace of motion they are unsurpassed; the action of 
running, instead of jumping like sparrows, is very distinctive of 
wagtails. Tree sparrows have their bright side, but not very bright; 
they are cheerful, hardy and healthy, and breed freely, but their 
merits end there. Like their cousins of the gutter, they have an 
invincible determination to be known as thieves; they never take a 
crumb, or a grain of corn, but under the semblance of theft; they 
watch their opportunity to filch the selected morsel, and fly away 
with it to eat in secret; no sparrow will eat if he knows you are 
looking at him: town sparrow and country sparrow are alike in 
this; he casts a sidelong glance at the morsel he covets, and then 
a glance at your own eye, and so long as he sees that you are 
looking he is as grave as a judge, and as abstemious as an 
anchorite ; but avert your eye for a moment, and the treasure is 
gone,—it has been carried to the most remote corner of the cage, 
there to be devoured in secret. 
To return to my little parrots; I began on the 24th of March, 
1871, with a single pair, male and female, the female being without 
a tail, and the male being partially denuded of feathers on his 
back, and almost wholly so on his sides. My cage is seven feet 
and a half long, five feet deep, twelve feet high at the back and 
ten feet high in front, with a slanting roof: there are two sub- 
stantial parallel perches four feet apart and extending the whole 
length of the cage: the wall of the house forms the back of the 
cage; the wall of a neighbour’s conservatory forms one side; the 
other side and the front are made of wire netting. 
About a month after obtaining possession of the somewhat ragged 
couple I have described, I observed the amatory symptoms which 
precede breeding; and knowing the success that had attended the 
breeding of this species in the Zoological Gardens, I determined 
