common practice to place the eggs under a common fowl, the risk of the loss of the brood being thus avoided. The natural period of incubation is from twenty-eight to twenty-nine days. The female guinea-fowl commences laying in May, and continues to lay during the summer, and it is not until the latter part of the summer that, if left to her instinct, she begins to sit upon her eggs; these are smaller than those of the ordinary barn-door fowl, and are remarkable for the hardness of the shell, which is of a pale yellowish red, finely dotted with a darker tint. Their flavour is reckoned very superior.

The guinea-fowl may be said to succeed the pheasant in the London market, coming in after the season of the latter is over, and it must be acknowledged that the flesh of the young bird is very delicate, juicy, and well-flavoured-this remark, however, only applies to the young, for old birds, even those of the second year, are dry, tough, and tasteless, nor will the larding of the poulterer improve them.

The guinea-fowl is too well known to need a detailed description, nor is it subject to much variation of plumage. Individuals with the breast or under parts more or less extensively

white are common; and we have occasionally seen cream-coloured birds, in which, however, the white spots are clearly to be distinguished. Trees, where accessible, or tall thick bushes, are its favourite roosting-places, and on these the flock cluster, even during the winter, the cold of which they endure with great hardiness. We have noticed this indifference to cold in the pea-fowl, originally from India, and the same observation applies to the guinea-fowl of Africa, and we may also add the common fowl, of Indian origin; nor can we avoid seeing in these facts a wise provision, for the express purpose of facilitating the diffusion of species eminently useful to man.

The domestic guinea-fowl is by no means strong on the wing. Its note is a peculiar harsh querulous sound, often repeated, and certainly not agreeable; it reminds us of the noise of a cart-wheel turning on an ungreased axle-tree, or the ereaking of rusty hinges. Besides the common guinea-fowl, (Numida meleagris,) several other wild species are known, some of which are remarkable for their beauty. All are African. In the genus numida, the males are destitute of spurs.

THE COLUMBINE, OR PIGEON GROUP.

Very numerous are the species comprehended under the term pigeon, (Columba,) and many are the genera into which they are resolvable. Their geographic distribution is most extensive. Some species seem very widely spread, as the rock-dove, found alike in Europe, Asia, and Africa, while others are restricted in the range of their natural territory. Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia, the Indian Archipelago, New Zealand, and various islands in the southern ocean, present us with various and beautiful species of the columbine group; of these, some are exclusively arboreal and fruiteaters; as the aromatic pigeon of Java, the manosope of New Guinea, and the nutmeg pigeon of the Moluccas; others are partially terrestrial in their habits, as the ring-pigeon or cushat, and the stock-dove or wood-pigeon of Europe; and others are exclusively terrestrial, as the carunculated pigeon (Geophilus carunculatus) of South Africa, and some American and Australian species. A few, as the rock-pigeon, (Columba livia,) frequent abrupt and inaccessible precipices, along the shores of the sea,

and rear their young on the ledges, or in the rifts and fissures of the rock.

There has been much difference among naturalists respecting the natural affinities of the pigeon, or columbine group; some considering them as forming a part of the rasorial, or gallinaceous order, others regarding them as constituting a distinct order, an opinion entertained by Temminck, De Blainville, and the prince of Musignano, and which we think is correct. Though zoological niceties in a popular work like the present are out of place, still it may not be uninteresting to the general reader to follow out a succinct review of those peculiarities, which draw a line of demarcation. between the pigeons and the gallinaceous, or other orders of the feathered race.

The gallinaceous birds are polygamous, and the females lay numerous eggs; the young are hatched in a very developed state, and soon run about and feed themselves. Pigeons, on the contrary, pair; and it would appear that in general a single male and female remain mated for life. Both work in concert in the construction of a rude inartificial nest, in which the female deposits two eggs, on which the male and female sit in turn. The young

are hatched blind, unfledged, naked, and helpless, and require the assiduous care of their parents, even for some time after they are able to leave the nest. Consequently they are fed by the parents, and herewith is connected one of the most singular points in the economy of these birds, which indicates their far remove from any of the gallinaceous order.

Most persons have had an opportunity of seeing pigeons feeding their young; the old birds place their beaks in the open mouth of the young, and by means of a voluntary action transfer nutriment from their own crop into that of their nestlings. Many naturalists have supposed the nutriment thus transferred to be nothing more than the macerated grain, or peas which have been previously swallowed; but this is not correct; for at first the young are not capable of digesting this coarse aliment. They are, in fact, fed by a secretion closely analogous to milk, and poured out from certain glands in the crop, both of the male and female, but at the time only when such a secretion is needed. This fact was correctly ascertained by the celebrated John Hunter. "During incubation (he says) the coats of the crop in the pigeon are gradually enlarged and