214 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



straight, even when asleep.* It is now known for certain that 

 the cock bird sits only for five hours on the eggs, while the hen 

 devotes nineteen hours out of the twenty-four to warm and cherish 

 them. If she neglects to sit on the eggs, or fails to impart warmth 

 equally to them, they are sure to be unproductive. If she ceases 

 to sit after five or six days, another hen is engaged, and this 

 substitute is called daya, or nurse. When the young ones are 

 hatched the parents do not feed them for want of affection. The 

 nurse feeds them like her own offspring, for Pigeons are not 

 endowed with any discriminative power, and therefore make no 

 distinction between their own and other eggs. 



Feeding is called bharana, and the Pigeons ceasing to sit on 

 the egg is zor karana. A Pigeon leaves its eggs either when it 

 has gone wrong, or when it gets out of time — i.e. when the 

 twenty days, or the time for hatching, is past and expired. It 

 is only when there is no hope of hatching that it ceases to 

 tend its eggs. 



According to Abul Fazl, twenty or twenty-one days (or three 

 weeks) are generally required for hatching an egg; but if the 

 season be warm, seventeen or eighteen days suffice. I say that 

 the two eggs are never laid in one day, but on alternate days — 

 i. e. if one to-day, the second will be laid the day after to-morrow. 

 The same is the case with the young ones. Pigeon-fanciers, 

 however, sometimes remove the first egg, and put it under the 

 Pigeon when the second is laid. This is only done when the 

 young are intended to make their appearance simultaneously. 

 For six days (says Abul Fazl) they are fed ow falah, but "falah" 

 really means peosi, or cows' milk for the first four or five days 

 after calving: it is very thick, and the gentry and nobility abstain 

 from it — only the lower classes use it. As Pigeons have no such 

 thing, I do not exactly understand what the Sheikh means. It is, 

 of course, true that the parents give them grain after having 

 softened it in their own crops, and this soft mixture of grain and 

 water may be called falah. Feeding their young ones in this way 

 is called hi Hindi bharana. Three days after they have swallowed 

 the grain, and before it is digested, they bring it up from their 

 crops and give it to their young. This they continue to do for 

 twenty days. Abul Fazl says that, after a month or so, the young 



* In the case of birds, sleeping is called bugldana. 



