"7 



man succeeded, in spite of the furious onskiugiit of tlie 

 male, in getting his hand into the nest, and extracted 

 an egg containing a Uvely chick with its beak well 

 through the shell. On July 12 we found that two 

 young birds had been hatched out, and that four of the 

 five remaining eggs were " chipping." On July 20 the 

 nest contained three eggs only, two of which contained 

 dead young birds, whilst the third was rotten ; we took 

 this one away, and the next day the nest was empty and 

 deserted, the old birds having certainly devoured the 

 whole of their progeny, as Artemus Ward says " on foot 

 and in the shell." For many days after the final catas- 

 trophe the female took to perching, a habit to which she 

 was by no means frequently addicted before she had 

 laid, she now constantly uttered a mournful cry that 

 we had not before heard, very different from her sharp 

 angry bark of menace whilst she was sitting. I am 

 strongly of opinion that in this atrocity the male bird 

 was the chief, if not the sole culprit ; but I regret to 

 say that it is now impossible to learn from any future 

 experience how to allot the blame with i-egard to him, 

 as both he and the only other bird of the six positively 

 known to be a male have died since the events above 

 recorded. 



