100 The Successful Breeding of Turacus persa. 
shed (glazed) of two metres by one metre formed a shelter. 
I placed under this shelter a covered box with a hole of about 
50 centimetres at the side. 
Both l)irds appeared immediately to take pleasure in their 
new lodging and frequented the box. where they spent the 
nights. 
At the beginning of June, while visiting them, I found on 
several blades of hay, rudely disposed, two large round white 
eggs, almost the size of those of the Golden Pheasant. I was 
delighted with this discovery, so much the more as the male 
and female covered assiduously, and at the end of eighteen days 
I saw hatched two chicks covered with black down. My 
joy was not of long duration — at the end of eighteen days 1 
found the corpse of one of the young thrown from the nest, 
and the next day that of the second. 
Two days after the female had laid again in the same 
nest, always very clean, and a second incubation commenced; 
two young were born the end of July, which were likewise 
killed and thrown from the nest hy tlie parents. 
I then despaired of ever raising these birds, who seemed 
to have the fault of many of their exotic congeners, which is 
one of the most serious obstacles to their reproduction in an 
aviary : the exaggerated ardour of the male which kills the 
young after one or two weeks, in order to begin again a new 
nest. 
Mobilised since the first of August, 1 scarcely thoughi 
more of the touracos, when my mother, who concerned herself 
very actively with my birds in my absence, wrote me that a 
young Touraco was born on the ist of September, during the 
German occupation, and its parents were rearing it perfectly 
this time. 
The season advanced, the excessive excitement of the 
male had passed, and he thought no more of reproducing again. 
This young bird lived two and a half months, but it was 
rickety, its toes were defective, and it died at the beginning of 
JS'py ember, 
