for his water-fowls, with a gentle slope for an ap proach, surrounded with green turf, of which these birds are fonder than young chickens.

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CHAPTER XI.

FEEDING OF THE YOUNG.

BIRDS differ essentially from quadrupeds in their mode of providing food for their young. Among the latter, Providence has furnished the mother with a supply of food for her offspring within herself till the teeth arrive at sufficient growth for manducation; and hence even animals of prey do not, for several weeks, bring food to their cubs, but nourish them solely with milk, Birds, on the other hand, have to provide food for their young from the second day after they are hatched. During the first day they have, in general, sufficient nutriment in the last portions of the yolk of the egg, which they have absorbed, as we have already seen, through the umbilical vessels.

We may follow John Hunter in dividing animal life into three stages or periods, the first comprehending the foetal or embryo state; the second the period immediately after birth, when the parent must, in most cases, supply food; and the third dating from the time when the animal begins to act for itself without parental care. The first and third of these stages are perhaps common to all animals; but some appear to pass immediately from the first to the third stage. The nourishment which is provided in the second stage varies to infinity. In most insects it is effected by the mother instinctively depositing her egg or cocoon upon or near something that will form appropriate food for the young when hatched. Most birds again collect food for their

young; though, in the instance of pigeons and some others, there exists a provision very similar to that of milk in quadrupeds.

"I have," says John Hunter, "in my inquiries concerning the various modes in which young animals are nourished, discovered that all the dove kind are endowed with a similar power. The young pigeon, like the young quadruped, till it is capable of digesting the common food of its kind, is fed with a substance secreted for that purpose by the parent animal; not as in the mammalia, by the female alone, but also by the male, which perhaps furnishes this nutriment in a degree still more abundant. It is a common property of birds, that both male and female are equally employed in hatching and in feeding their young in the second stage; but this particular mode of nourishment, by means of a substance secreted in their own bodies, is peculiar to certain kinds, and is carried on in the crop.

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Besides the dove-kind, I have some reason to suppose parrots to be endowed with the same faculty, as they have the power of throwing up the contents of the crop and feeding one another. I have seen the cock paroquet regularly feed the hen, by first filling his own crop, and then supplying her from his beak. Parrots, macaws, cockatoos, &c., when they are very fond of the person who feeds them, may likewise be observed to have the action of throwing up the food and often do it. The cock pigeon when he caresses the hen, performs the same kind of action as when he feeds his young; but I do not know if at this time he throws up any thing from the crop.

During incubation, the coats of the crop in the pigeon are gradually enlarged and thickened, like what happens to the udder of females of the class mammalia, in the term of uterine gestation. On

and plundered, they have been known to remove from an ancient breeding-place, in a body, no one knew where. Such was the case with one on the Delaware, near Thompson's Point, ten or twelve miles below Philadelphia; which, having been repeatedly attacked and plundered by a body of crows, after many severe encounters, the herons finally abandoned the place. Several of these breeding-places occur among the red cedars on the sea-beach of Cape May, intermixed with those of the little white heron, green bittern, and blue heron. The nests are built entirely of sticks, in considerable quantities, with frequently three or four nests on the same tree. The eggs are generally four in number, measuring two inches and a quarter in length, by one and three quarters in thickness, and of a very pale light blue colour. The ground or marsh below is bespattered with their excrements lying all around like whitewash, with feathers, broken egg-shells, old nests, and frequently small fish, which they have dropped by accident and neglected to pick up. On entering the swamp in the neighbourhood of one of these breeding-places, the noise of the old and the young would almost induce one to suppose that two or three hundred Indians were choking or throttling each other. The instant an intruder is discovered, the whole rise in the air in silence, and remove to the tops of the trees in another part of the woods; while parties of from eight to ten make occasional circuits over the spot to see what is going on. When the young are able, they climb to the highest part of the trees; but knowing their inability, do not attempt to fly. Though it is probable that these nocturnal birds do not see well during the day, yet their faculty of hearing must be exquisite, as it is almost impossible, with all the precautions one can use, to penetrate near their residence without being

stance, when just secreted it most probably very soon coagulates into a granulated white curd; for in such a form, I have always found it in the crop, and if an old pigeon is killed just as the young ones are hatching, the crop will be found as above described, and in its cavity pieces of white curd mixed with some of the common food of the pigeon, such as barley, beans, &c. If we allow either of the parents to feed the young, its crop, when examined, will be discovered to contain the same curdled substance, which passes thence into the stomach, where it is to be digested.

"The young pigeon is fed for some time with this substance only, and about the third day, some of the common food is found mingled with it; and as the pigeon grows older, the proportion of common food is increased; so that by the time it is seven, eight, or nine days old, the secretion of the curd ceases in the old ones, and of course no more will be found in the crop of the young. It is a curious fact, that the parent pigeon has at first the power to throw up this curd without any mixture of common food, although afterwards both are thrown up according to the proportion required for the young ones. I have called this substance curd, not as being literally so, but as resembling that more than any thing I know: it may, however, have a greater resemblance to curd, than we are perhaps aware of; for neither this secretion, nor curd from which the whey has been pressed, seem to contain any sugar, and do not run into the acetous fermentation. The property of coagulating is confined to the substance itself, as it produces no such effect when mixed with milk. This secretion in the pigeon, like all other animal substances, becomes putrid by standing, though not so readily as either blood or meat, it