74 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
ing down everything I can find to give, but have been try- 
ing to bite off the fingers that fed them I" 
" I am sorry for your fingers, dear, and you must let me 
feed them hereafter — ^but I like their appetite and their 
spunk, they should have both, to sing as they are going to 
sing !" 
" Well, brother — ^liave it your own way ; but I don't be- 
lieve in making an angel out of a glutton !" 
This last remark rather stung me, for somehow or other, 
since the discovery of the impaled lizards, I had been feeling 
uncomfortable. I went to the cage, and they received me 
with clamorous cries for more ! I immediately got for them 
a quantity of food, such as I had supposed to be best for them, 
from what I had read and heard of their habits. I found, to 
my astonishment, that they would eat nothing but earth 
worms and fresh meat — farinaceous food they rejected with 
disdain — and certainly gulphed down as much as their own 
weight every few hours. 
The thing was becoming more inexplicable, and what 
made matters still worse, my sister, for the first time in her 
life, refused to share my cares with me. She had taken a 
most unconquerable dislike to the creatures ; declared she 
was absolutely afraid of them, and shuddered when they 
were brought near her. This reception of my new variety 
mortified me excessively ; but I consoled myself that I was 
doomed to the common martyrdom of discoverers, and 
nursed my uncouth and boisterous pets with even the greater 
assiduity that they were rejected of men ! 
I now let them run about the yard ; for I soon found that 
the ravin in their maws constituted a sufiicient parole of 
honor to ensure their return to where food was to be obtain- 
ed ; but one morning I witnessed a trick of one of my vaga- 
bonds that considerably stumped me. He had straggled 
around to the back of the house, and got into the poultry 
yard. I saw him march very deliberately up to a brood of 
young chickens, and without saying "by your leave" to any- 
