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becomes beautifully tame and utters its call-note with aggravat¬

ing frequency. In an aviary it is one of the most delightful of

birds and always keeps itself in first-rate condition. I have never

found it to be very pugnacious, although on that score it has a

bad reputation.


In this country it is very fond of beech-mast, and ma) r be

found in huge flocks where such food is plentiful. In captivity

it is long-lived and hardy, thriving well on the ordinary seeds

without any additional dainties.



A WALK IN THE “JARDIN D’ACCLIMATATION ”


OF PARIS.


By O. Ernest Cresswerl.


(Continued from page 48J .


Opposite to the fine range of aviaries which I attempted

to describe in my last paper, is the Doves’ house ; I do not mean

a dovecote in the common sense of the term, but a house chiefly

devoted to foreign Doves. The tribe are special favourites of

my own, and so it is that I always visit this house with very

mixed feelings, for it is singularly ill-adapted to its purpose—at

least to the purpose of housing these sweet exotic races in

anything approaching to comfort. For the mere exhibition of

the birds, as in a show or dealer’s shop, it is fairly well

suited; but I do not conceive this to be the chief objeCt of an

acclimatization Society. A number of Doves, chiefly of the

smaller races, are usually on view, but every time I go to the

gardens I find, apparently, a fresh stock. The house is somewhat

ornamented, many-sided, and well roofed, but too much shaded

by trees. The pens (for this is, I think, the most appropriate

term for them) are in two stories ; the upper ones are entirely

roofed over, boarded at the back and sides, and wired in front,

not unlike show-cages. They are furnished with perches, but

with no nooks for retreat, or real shelter from wind ; and some

of them are never reached by the sun.


These are the abodes of the foreign Doves—natives, for

the most part, of tropical Africa and the islands of the Indian

seas—I have before found them well filled with the smaller and

more attractive of the not very rare species : I cannot say always

accurately named, for in 1893, a cage full of the little Brazilian

Chceitiepelia picui , so distinctly barred on the shoulder with steel

blue, was labelled Chalcopelia afra , the little African Dove to

which Eevaillant gave the inappropriate name of Emerald. Last



