142 Birds I Have Kept. 



seen tlieiu pick up any of the seeds they might have un- 

 covered: and it is, perhaps, in consequence of their inability 

 to procure this kind of food that I have failed in my attempts 

 to keep them for any length of time. 



Decline, and inability to cast their feathers, seem to be 

 the principal diseases incidental to these birds: those I have 

 lost appeared in good health only two or three days before 

 their death. One day I found them sitting bundled up on 

 their perch, with head under wing; the next they were unable 

 to fly, and on the following morning I found them stiff and 

 cold, and nothing but a bag of bones. 



The "Whydahs will eat mealworms and blackbeetles, small 

 ones, but I do not fancy that these insects agree with them: 

 a friend of mine who lives in South Africa has told me that 

 these birds chiefly subsist when wild on a kind of small shining 

 beetle that is very abundant in the woods frequented by these 

 beautiful and quaint-looking creatures. 



I well remember the feeling of longing, not to say envy, 

 with which, then a youngster myself, I contemplated a sailor 

 lad at Havre, who was carrying one of these remarkable 

 creatures in a bamboo cage past the window of the house 

 where we were staying; presumably .the young fellow was just 

 off ship, and had brought the bird from Africa as a present 

 for his mother, or possibly for someone "nearer and dearer" 

 still, if that can be. Tet, when my desire was fulfilled, many 

 years afterwards, and I became the actual possessor of a real 

 live pair of Whydah-birds, I did not care nearly as much 

 about them as might have been expected: which, after all, is 

 human nature. 



To resume: Vidua paradisea, die Paradies Witve, and la 

 Veuve d, Collier d'or, as the bird is named in Latin, German 

 and French, respectively, is, properly speaking the Whydah- 

 bird: the popular designation of "widow" bird being, I fancy, 

 a free translation of the Latin word vidua, as their true name 

 was Latinised by Linnaeus, rather than an actual name be- 



