Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/682

662 illusions. The interest of all was at once renewed; some started to follow me, making little swift runs and stopping short to look. Even after one had been shot they seemed rather startled than frightened by the noise of the gun. A few flew off for a short distance, but most remained, looking from me to the dead bird with great surprise, so that I was enabled to secure four specimens without moving from where I stood.

On subsequent occasions several specimens were captured alive, by hand, all that was necessary being to remain perfectly still, and feed them with breadcrumbs until they ventured within reach. When brought home, and let loose within-doors, they still showed no fear, running about the room actively, eating freely what was given them, and, oddly enough, fighting fiercely among themselves (a habit which I never observed an instance of when they were in the open air), but never using their wing-spurs as weapons. We put several of them into an extemporized coop, where they fought and pecked at the woodwork all night, chirping the while so like chickens that I once got up, thinking that some of our fowls had been fastened into the house. When shut up in this way they bore the confinement very illy, beating themselves constantly against the bars of the cage, and pecking fiercely at the woodwork. They would often stay around the house for several days, however, when let loose, running with our chickens and feeding with them like tame pigeons. One, whose wing had been clipped, remained for a week or more, but finally wandered off and was killed by the great southern skua which fills the place of a hawk in those regions.

Cuvier, on the authority of Vieillot, attributes to the larger species a propensity for carrion, and a power of erecting the horny sheath, neither of which characters was to be found in those which we observed. The Australian species (identical with Chionis alba of Forster ) was named C. necrophaga by Vieillot on this account, but our chionis was one of the very few birds never found feeding on carrion. It was quite omnivorous in its diet, taking with equal readiness bread, vegetables, and fresh meat. The sheath was found to be firmly soldered to the base of the upper mandible, and therefore could not possibly be erectile.

About the middle of December (midsummer in the antarctic region) the sheath-bills began to break up into pairs, and to show signs of breeding. I never was so fortunate as to find a completed nest, although I often observed the pairs frequenting the crevices of fallen rocks, as if preparing to build. By the sealers, of whom several visited the island during our stay, I was informed that they build in the localities that I had attributed to them, constructing a nest of grass-stems, and laying three party-colored eggs; moreover, that they are exceedingly dexterous in misleading the egg-hunter as to the