92 Dr. A. G. Buti.br,


bird : on two occasions there were partly developed young in the

shells.


On May 25th I bought two healthy-looking pairs of Estrilda

phcenicotis and kept them in a flight-cage together until June 3rd,

when I turned one pair outside and a hen into one of my indoor

aviaries, where I had and still have a well-seasoned cock bird :

the following morning I found both hens dead, with nothing

whatever to show why they died. L,ater in the year the male

outside died and I gave the odd male away.


On June 17th my Yellowish finches began to worry a hen

Ribbon-finch, so I removed them to a smaller aviary where they

soon began to carry hay into a box, one chasing the other and

singing excitedly: however nothing came of it and both I and

Mr. Seth -Smith feel sure that the two are cock birds.


On July 1st a hen Staganopleiwa g7ittala, bought last year,

died egg-bound ; which, in my experience, is the usual fate of

hens of this species in captivity.


July 13th Miss Gladstone very kindly sent me a pair of

Erythrura pi'asina, but on the 15th I noticed the cock eating in-

cessantly and was not surprised to find it dead on the 16th. The

same kind friend ordered a second pair for me ; the cock arrived

on the 21st with a broken leg, the supposed hen (a young cock

out of colour) seemed healthy; both were dead by the 29th.

Miss Gladstone then ordered two cock birds forme which arrived

on August 2nd, but were in female plumage excepting that the

head looked bluish ; these and the original hen are still living

and healthy : both cocks are now in full colour.


My English Goldfinches went to nest in one of my indoor

aviaries in July; one young one was half feathered when my

Poephila acuticauda attacked it on the 28th, pecking a great hole

in its back and dragging it out on to the floor.


On August 13th Mr. Teschemaker very kindly sent me his

pair of young Black Tanagers : they were delayed so long on the

railway that they arrived quite dazed with hunger and thirst ;

the hen was in the worse case and has been more or less out of-

sorts ever since.


September 4th. As noted in a previous paper my Stictop-

tera bichenovii died from heat-apoplexy. On the 8th I caught up



