Birds. 5071 



tion, they could not have arrived here before the first days of June, 

 and so not have begun their nests until from the 6th to the 8th of that 

 month, yet it is quite certain that, on the 25th, or at most the 27th, of 

 June, the young had left the nest. Indeed, our observations on the 

 spot answer completely to the account given to us by the people in 

 Bournatut on the 30th, namely, that the young with their parents had 

 then already arrived in the gardens four or five days ; and to what was 

 told us by a chasseur, whom we met, who said that he had found a 

 great number of young full fledged in the nest on the 22nd of June in 

 a different locality from this. For this reason we found in the whole 

 large number of nests only two with young unfledged, all the others 

 w T ere flown. Of eggs we found but very few, all addled, and not more 

 than two in a nest. 



" These eggs measure, on the average, 13"' in large and 9j/' / in 

 small diameter. I say on the average, because we did not find two 

 exactly alike, some being pear-shaped, others elliptical. Some are 

 fleshy white, others pearl-white with a tinge of blue ; some have a few 

 small, dark specks at the thick end. The shell is very beautiful, 

 strong, shining. Although the general number of eggs may be two 

 or three, judging from the number of young which were in company 

 with their parents on the first days of their flight, yet it may never- 

 theless often amount to four or five. 



" The great difference in number between the male and female 

 (which I spoke of in my last letter), having found eight males out of 

 ten individuals procured, is reducible to a much smaller proportion ; 

 for although the difference exists it appears greater, because most of 

 the birds were procured at the breeding time, when the females were 

 passing most of the day on the nest. Another fact leads towards the 

 same conclusion, namely, that the males, whilst the females are sit- 

 ting, could go off by themselves in search of grasshoppers, and then, 

 with grasshoppers in their beaks, fly away back to the mountains, no 

 doubt in order to feed the sitting female, or, later in the season, the 

 young. The perseverance with which the rose-starlings search for 

 grasshoppers seems to have its origin not so much in regard for their 

 own supply of food as in an instinctive desire of destruction or anti- 

 pathy against them. The rose-starlings dart down upon them and 

 kill them, uttering continual cries and squalls, and leave the greater 

 part of them untouched on the earth. 



"One morning, as 1 was observing, for half-an-hour together, five 

 rose-starlings, which were eating the fruit of a white mulberry tree 

 with great avidity, 1 saw two or three of them dart down suddenly 



