114 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



hand. As soon as they could feed themselves I turned them into an out-door 

 aviary, where were several of the Barhary Turtle Dove, both the ordinary 

 variety and also the white variety, popularly called " White Java Doves." 

 The Turtle Doves stood the winter very well, and after they had moulted 

 I saw that there were two cocks and one hen, though I had been fairly 

 sure of their sex for some time before ; for the two cocks, much to my 

 surprise, frequently "cooed" during the winter while still in their nestling 

 plumage. Towards the end of last March I noticed the odd cock Turtle 

 Dove "kissing" a young white hen, so I at once removed them into an 

 aviary, where there were no other doves except one cock Barred Dove. 

 The young white hen had laid twice already, but she had not secured a 

 mate, and her eggs proved unfertile on each occasion. On the 20th May 

 I found that the white hen had laid two eggs in a nesting box lined with 

 hay ; the cock Turtle Dove sat during the daytime and the hen at night,|as 

 is usual with Turtur risorius, and probably also with T. communis. During 

 the period of incubation I noticed one very curious circumstance: both 

 birds, but especially the white hen, were very shy about being seen on the 

 nest; during the first week the hen would fly off whenever I appeared, 

 whereas, when she was sitting on the two previous occasions, she used to 

 strike at me with her beak and wings whenever I touched her. On this 

 occasion, up to the very last, even when the eggs were hatched, she would 

 never stay on the nest long enough to let me touch her, though it is usual 

 for all my Turtur risorius to sit as closely as a brooding fowl. Does not 

 this shyness suggest that the bird herself was well aware that she was 

 doing something rather out of the common ? Her two eggs nearly came to 

 grief, for one day I found a small indentation and crack in the shell of each 

 egg, made by the beak or claw of some bird : however, the skins of the 

 eggs were not broken, so I mended them with plaster-of-paris, gum, and 

 tissue-paper ! Finally, after fourteen days' incubation, two very dark- 

 skinned little birds appeared: they grew very rapidly and fledged well, 

 and in about three weeks' time left the nest, and began catering for them- 

 selves. They now looked like pure-bred nestlings of the Turtle Dove, 

 except that they already had the black and white patch on the sides of the 

 neck, nearly as distinct as in old birds, whereas in the pure-bred young of 

 the Turtle Dove this patch does not appear till after the moult, and in the 

 young of the Barbary Dove the black colour is very indistinct till after the 

 moult; in the adult white doves one can see, so to speak, where the collar 

 ought to be ; the white feathers there look quite different to those on the 

 other parts of the bird. In the young white dove one can hardly see any 

 trace at all of the collar. It appears to me very curious that the young 

 hybrids should have had a well-developed neck patch, which the pure-bred 

 offspring of each parent bird are without at that age. The birds have got 

 into their full plumage now, and resemble a pure-bred Turtle Dove very 



