142 NETHER LOCHABER. 



we are not aware that it has ever been met with anywhere in the 

 north or north-western counties. The turtle is, as we have said, 

 an exceedingly beautiful and handsome bird, the breast of a delicate 

 vinaceous tint, and a black patch on either side of the neck, each 

 feather of which is tipped with a crescent of pure white, giving it 

 a very elegant and striking appearance. It is less bulky and less 

 rotund in form than the common dove, its shape more nearly 

 resembling that of the blue jay or throstle cock, which latter it also 

 about equals in size. We have never seen this bird in confine- 

 ment, but it is said to exhibit a remarkable degree of tenderness 

 and sagacity, whether as a cage or chamber bird. On the Continent 

 it is kept not only for its tameness and beauty, but because it is a 

 common belief among the people that it attracts to itself bad 

 humours, and is to a family in the matter of diseases what a 

 lightning-rod is to a building in a thunderstorm. Bechstein, a 

 shrewd and intelligent man, seems to think that the belief in 

 question, absurd as it may appear to us, is not so ill-founded after 

 all, for he says quietly, " Thus much at least is certain, that during 

 the illness of men it readily becomes sickly." The explanation 

 probably is that, being a tender and delicate bird, the odour and 

 ^ effluvia attendant on certain human ailments affects it as described. 

 Other birds are occasionally similarly affected; thus, when our 

 own children were laid up with a very bad kind of scarlatina, our 

 cage-birds, gold and green finches, were out of sorts for some time, 

 drooping and dejected and unable to sing as usual, though the 

 month was April, when they should have been in all respects at 

 their best and in full and free song. You may be sure, by the 

 way, that we were not a little pleased with a paragraph which 

 appeared the other day about the male cockatoo that dropped the 

 egg, very much, no doubt, to the astonishment of his amiable 

 mistress. When some years ago we ventured to assert that males 

 of various birds, notably the common domestic cock, sometimes 



