Scent. 75 



physiologicall3^ The suppression of the scent during incuba- 

 tion is necessary to the safety of the birds, and essential to 

 the continuance of the species. I beheve this suppression 

 is due to what may be termed vicarious secretion. In other 

 words, the odoriferous particles which are usually exhaled by 

 the skin are, during such time as the bird is sitting, excreted 

 into the intestinal canal, most probablj' into the caecum or 

 the cloaca. The proof of this is accessible to everyone ; the 

 excrement of a common fowl or pheasant, when the bird is 

 not sitting, has, when first discharged, no odour akin to the 

 smell of the bird itself. On the other hand, the excrement 

 of a sitting hen has a most remarkable odour of the fowl, 

 but highly intensified. We arc all acquainted with this smell 

 as increased by heat during roasting ; and practical poultry 

 keepers must have remarked that the excrement voided 

 by a hen on leaving the nest has an odour totally unlike 

 that discharged at any other time, involuntarily recalling 

 the smell of a roasted fowl, highly and disagreeably intensified. 

 I believe the explanation of the whole matter to be as follows : 

 the suppression of the natural scent is essential to the safety 

 of the bird during incubation ; that at such time ^•icarious 

 secretion of the odoriferous jjarticles takes place into the 

 intestinal canal, so that the bird becomes scentless, and in 

 this manner her safetj^ and that of the eggs is secured. This 

 explanation Avould probably apply equally to partridges and 

 other birds nesting on the ground. 



The absence of scent in the sitting pheasant is most probably 

 the explanation of the fact that foxes and pheasants are capable 

 of being reared in the same preserves ; at the same time the 

 keepers are usually desirous of making assurance doubly sure, by 

 scaring the foxes from the neighbourhood of the nests by some 

 strong and offensive substance. A very practical gamekeeper 

 writes as follows : — " If any keeper will find his nests and 

 sprinkle a Httle gas tar anywhere about them, he will find 

 the foxes will not take the birds. I should, as a keeper, find 

 every nest possible, and dress the bushes, stumps of trees, etc.,. 



