having it. The other one seems all the while to admire it too, and often makes as though to take it from him—prettily and softly—but he refuses it to her, something as a dog prettily refuses to give up a stick to his master. At last, however, he lets her take it—which, it is apparent, he has meant to do all the time—and when she has it she behaves in much the same manner with it, whilst he would seem to beg it back of her, and thus they go on together for such a time that at last I weary of watching them. There is a wonderful making much of the fish between the two birds, yet it is not eaten by either of them, and there is no chick, here, in the case. It is quite apparent that the fish is only something for coquetry and affection to gather about—it is a focus, a point d'appui, a peg to hang love upon. Yet the birds—and this is what I constantly notice—seem only to have a kind of half consciousness of what they mean." This particular fish, I may say, was minus the head, which had the appearance of having been neatly and cleanly cut off.
Yet there are harsher notes amidst all this tenderness, and the state of a bird's appetite will sometimes make a vast difference in its conduct under the same or similar circumstances. "A bird," for instance, "that has just come with a fish in its bill for the young one, is violently attacked—and this several times in succession—by the other parent, who is in actual charge of the chick. This one—we will suppose it to be the father, though, I half think, unjustly—makes the greediest dart at the fish, trying to seize it out of his wife's bill, and also pecks her very violently. Once he seizes her by the neck and holds her thus for some seconds, yet all the while in the couched attitude and
