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How certain Secreted Stores, and certain exuded Provisions 

 of Moisture seem to exist, whereby Young Gallinaceous 

 Birds are enabled to sustain life in dry seasons. By 

 Ralph Carr-Ellison, Esq., of Dunstan Hill. 



Within the last decade of years some very dry summers 

 have occurred, and they were distinguished by a singular 

 scantiness of dew ; because through many weeks of drought 

 the nights were almost always overclouded, so that the radia- 

 tion of warmth from the earth was intercepted, and the 

 surfaces of grass and other herbage rarely became cold enough 

 to condense the humidity of the atmosphere and cause it to 

 be deposited upon them. The absence of dew for long spaces 

 of time was much noticed by labourers and other country folk. 

 Strange to say, these droughty summers were as prolific as 

 any known in the fine broods of partridge and grouse that 

 were reared by the parent birds. How was this possible? 

 For we know* that when these birds are hatched under a 

 domestic hen, they cannot live without liquid any more than 

 barn-door thicks. Nor is there any reason to think that the 

 parent birds of the gallinaceous order can convey water to 

 their young. 



I remember telling one or two members of our Club that I 

 was pretty-well satisfied that we owed our plentiful game- 

 broods to" a source little thought of; namely, to the very 

 copious and well-known production called cuckoo-froth, 

 which is secreted by the little frog-skip insect, in its early 

 state, from the aqueous juices of our vernal and estival 

 herbage-plants and cereals. The froth in question is perfectly 

 tasteless, whatever may be the plant wherefrom it may have 

 been formed. Cuckoo-froth was abundant in the very dryest 

 and most dewless of these dry summers. It ascends far up 

 upon these moorland hills, where it is found not only on 

 moist grassy vegetation, but upon heather, bent, and, if I 

 mistake not, also upon bracken. Its limit of altitude I have 

 not ascertained ; but, speaking generally, it is pretty abun- 

 dant on the moors as well as in the cultivated grass lands 

 and corn-fields. 



In a cold, wet spring like the present of 1872, it is not 

 developed till after a few warmish days of June. Towards 

 the end of May I could not find it in Kent, when showers 

 were ever and anon recurring. But it was discoverable in 



