Page:Acclimatisation; its eminent adaptation to Australia.djvu/34

32 by water." The birds before laying scrape a hole in the earth, in which, without any lining of grass or feathers, the female deposits her eggs. As many as a dozen eggs have been found in the same nest. Numbers of these nests have been robbed of both eggs and young, but the young birds so taken have invariably died. After repeated unsuccessful attempts to rear them, by two years' perseverance he at last succeeded in hatching some eggs under hens. As soon as he got the hens to lay, and in due time to sit, by replacing several of their eggs with half the number of those of the balœniceps, as fresh as possible from the nest, the locality of which was previously known, he eventually succeeded in hatching several birds. These ran about the camp, and, to the great discomfort of the poor hens, would persist in performing all sorts of unchicken-like manœuvres with their large beaks and extended wings, in a small artificial pool constantly supplied with water, and the little pond was supplied with live fish, upon which, and occasionally the intestines of animals chopped into small pieces, they were reared.

The ostriches of Southern Africa would acclimatise well, and he valuable for their magnificent feathers, now becoming rare and expensive; and besides the black and white ostrich plumes, there are a number of birds in this and other countries that could be introduced, if only for their feathers as ornaments.

It will be impossible to enumerate all the valuable birds that could be introduced with advantage; but when speaking of pheasants I forgot to mention that the phasianus versicolor from Japan, and the P. torquatus or ring-necked from China, have crossed with our common pheasants, and produced hybrids of greater size and weight than either of the parents, and the plumage is beautiful. These were shown me by Mr. Gould during my recent visit to London, who shot them in Norfolk; and at the Aberdeen British Association, when Prince Albert visited the zoological section, so much interest did he take in the subject, that he requested Mr. Gould's paper on the pheasants to be deferred until his arrival, when he listened most attentively to the description, and examined the birds with the keenness of a sportsman and the practical eye of a naturalist, and expressed his admiration of the beauty of plumage and increased size of the hybrid breed.

Among many other valuable birds worth acclimatising, this