12



Correspondence



being caged. We tried giving sulphate of quinine in her water, bathing

the nostril with hydrogen peroxide and water and anointing it with

eucalyptus and vaseline and sanitas and vaseline. We also tried a

lotion and medicine recommended by a veterinary surgeon, with great

experience of parrots, but nothing was the slightest real good. There

was a little decrease in the discharge from the eye and nostril, but the

disease retreated deeper into the throat and bronchial tubes and the

King went the same way as the other victim. The cock with her,

who was caged and quarantined, did not develop the disease.

Fortunately there have been no more cases, and I am hoping that the

healthy low temperature of late autumn and winter will bring the

customary reduction in ailments. Incidentally the outbreak cost

me more Kings than the hen herself. At the time of her illness my

second hen was incubating a clutch of eggs, having already reared one

young one. As the cock with her was moulting when she laid and had,

in the past, proved a poor breeder, only fertilizing one egg in three

clutches during three years, I decided to remove the eggs so as not to

weaken the hen by long sitting and lower her vitality. When I broke

the four eggs, all proved fertile !


Tavistock.


CURIOUS BEHAVIOUR OF A HEN PHEASANT

We have a very tame hen Pheasant that wanders about the place,

comes when called, sits in the hen-house and, in fact, does everything

a Pheasant should not do, the point being that one cannot mistake

this bird, or confuse her with another. She adds to her list of the

unusual by regularly rearing eleven young every year, being an excellent

mother. Now she has reared three broods. The first year, when the

young were just colouring, I saw her and called her and she answered—

when she had taken her brood, as the crow flies, about three-quarters

of a mile due west of this house and the grounds in wdiich she had sat

and brought them up. So I naturally took it that she had wandered

off and got lost and that would be the end of her. However, back she

came about the first week in October, but without her brood. Last

year she sat in nearly the same place, reared her brood and, when

these were colouring, again took them away and I saw her with them



