// (iiiiy 1o Sdv lum' the beastly lliini^ died." 230 
\\\\v^ that would not sit. She incubatcMl them for three weeks 
and then left them, as they were clear. 
That autumn 1 obtained two more cocks. One. whicii 
was kept in a cai^e in the Isle of Wi.^-ht, fell a victim to the old 
enemy — septicaemia (not the well-known spotted fever tyi)e, hut 
another form, less contagious, but ultimately quite as deadly). 
The other male 1 put in the aviary with the hen. The first 
thini^- he did was to fall in love with a youni;- hen Rosella at 
liberty, whom he assiduously fed throu.t^h the wire-nettint^'. He 
also be^an to make himself very disacireeable to the hen Yellow- 
belly. I removed the charmer, and he promptly fell in love 
with her mother, who at that time was unmated, and he treated 
his proper bride even worse. 1 then obtained a cock Rosella 
v/ho soon made it plain to the Yellow-belly that his suit was 
unlikely to meet with success, so between us we persuaded him 
first to tolerate and later to take an interest in the lady of his 
own species. When spring came things began to look very 
hopeful; the cock Yellow-belly began to feed the hen, and later 
they were seen pairing. A nest seemed certain, but whether 
it was the very hot, dry weather, or something else which upset 
them, T cannot say, but the eggs never came, and the hen 
dropped into moult. In a week or two she was moulting 
heavily, and the cock had likewise begun ; then I began to notice 
that she seemed less active than usual and not so keen on her 
mealworms, a few mealworms, daily, being an important and 
perhaps a necessary part of the diet of these birds, according to 
my experience. Her eyes, however, looked bright, and she 
v,-as not puffy and did not sit with her head under her wing, so 1 
concluded that it was no more than the ordinary strain of the 
moult. However, some days later she seemed so weak that 
^ gave orders for her to be caught up and caged ; the same 
evening I returned to find her corpse on the hall table : the 
gardener told me he had caught her w'ithout the least fuss or 
trouble, but a few moments after being put in the cage she had 
jr.st collapsed and died. Post mortem revealed congestion ot 
the internal organs. 
For a time the cock bird seemed to go on all right ; then ' 
noticed that he, too, was losing his appetite and going the same 
way as the hen. Two alternative modes of treatment occurred 
