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who did not seem any too well disposed towards it. But I was

not long in discovering that the real trouble arose with the elder

chicks. The little odd one no sooner showed itself out of shelter

and tried to pick up a living than one or more of the others set

upon it with beak and heel, so that by midday, when I returned

from business, I found it with a perfectly raw head, too weak to

stand and apparently at its last gasp. However, I determined

to do what I could for it, and succeeded in bringing it round

sufficiently to restore it to its rightful mother, who reared it

without further trouble. And, strange to say, when it grew

up, it appeared that the hen was its rightful mother in very deed,

for it turned out to be a Bantam cockerel, and no doubt this

explains at once why the Pheasants were so hard upon it; but

that they should have been able to distinguish the difference

before they were 36 hours old, and should have so strongly

resented the intrusion of a tiny stranger, is truly a wonder.

The history is not yet complete. When the young cockerel was

more than half grown and beginning to crow, I found that his

father was very jealous of his presence, and was making the run

rather hot for him ; so I took him out and put him with an odd

adult hen in a coop by themselves. Next morning he was so

mutilated that I killed him out of sheer pity, and his female

assailant looked as proud as Ducifer over her achievement.


This season a Golden Pheasant hen and a cock Californian

Quail sat simultaneously in opposite corners of the same aviary,

and the Pheasant brought off her brood some days before the

Quail led out his tiny mites. He was in a state of intense

excitement about them, but showed no disposition to protect

them in the same way that a Bantam hen does, and before any

steps could be taken to preserve them, the Pheasant chicks had

worried them off the face of the earth, seizing them by the head

or back and shaking them as a terrier does a rat. (By way of

parenthesis, is there any other known instance of a cock bird

undertaking the whole duty of incubation and rearing of the

young, the hen taking no part whatever after laying the eggs ? I

fancy the Ostrich is, perhaps, another example, but am not sure :

it seems to be the normal characteristic of the Californian Quail).


To resume. We have, in our Arboretum, besides the

enclosed aviary, a pool of water with two islands on which a

small collection of water-fowl disport themselves. It is not well-

arranged or adapted for breeding, but occasionally a Tufted Diver

will bring out a brood, or a Wild Duck will sail out some fine

morning with a train of a baker’s dozen of tiny puff balls

apparently endowed with all the attributes of quicksilver except



