on the Syrian Bulbul.



143



doctor’s death, they passed into the hands of a friend of mine who

placed them in his aviary, where they occasionally brained some of

the small exotic Finches. He then presented them to me and I

have now had them for three or four years. They are delightful

birds, so bright and nimble, and though soberly clad, are elegantly

shaped and keep themselves in perfect trim.


They are very lively, and occasionally slip out of their cage,

and then it is a regular game of hide and seek. They fly about

perching on my head or on my finger, pecking it viciously, but with¬

out allowing themselves to be caught and chattering all the time

like angry sparrows. Then they unexpectedly disappear and it is

impossible to find them, when suddenly they dart out of their

hiding place and seem to mock me. One day after seeking one in

vain for a long time I found him at the bottom of an empty

water pail under a table, where he crouched so flatly that it was

difficult to see him.


I keep them in a large cage with a movable partition ; some¬

times they live peacefully together, while at times they fight and

have to be separted. They look perfectly alike in size, shape and

colour, and until last spring I thought they were two cocks, but one

day one of them seemed very puffy and altogether ailing. Its

former owner advised me to remove the partition and allow the birds

to be together saying that the little creature was melancholy and

wanted to be with its companion. I followed his advice and the

birds flew to each other and petted each other affectionately. Alas !

in less than an hour’s time one of them was crouching half dead at

the bottom of the cage and a heap of feathers littered the floor.

It was so badly hurt that I thought it would die before the end of

the day, but applications of Pond’s Extract of Hamamelis healed

its poor little inflamed head, and the very next day (18th March) to

my surprise, it laid an egg. After this it gradually recovered and in

time clothed itself with new feathers ; the wing feathers had all

been plucked off.


On the 17th of April it laid a second egg, and it contined to

lay during May and June no less than eighteen eggs. I tried

different kinds of nests, placed heather, grass, hay, etc. in the cage,

but it preferred to drop the eggs from the perch, consequently breaking



