and how I intended to manage the
little brood, and, if I could, to bring them up tame. We kept them some
days very warm by the fire, and fed them often, as I had seen my mother
do with her early chickens; and in a fortnight's time they were as stout
and familiar as common poultry. We kept them a long while in the house;
and when I fed them I always used them to a particular whistle, which
I also taught my wife, that they might know both us and their
feeding-time; and in a very short while they would come running, upon
the usual sound, like barn-door fowls to the name of Biddy.

There happened in this brood to be five hens and three cocks; and they
were now so tame that, having cut their wings, I let them out, when the
weather favoured, at my door, where they would pick about in the wood,
and get the best part of their subsistence; and having used them to
roost in a corner of my ante-chamber, they all came in very regularly
at night and took their places. My hens, at the usual season, laid me
abundance of eggs, and hatched me a brood or two each of chickens; so
that now I was at a loss to know what to do with them, they were become
so numerous. The ante-chamber was no longer a proper receptacle of such
a flock, and therefore I built a little house, at a small distance from
my own, on purpose for their reception and entertainment. I had by this
time cleared a spot of ground on one side of my grotto, by burning up
the timber and underwood which had covered it: this I enclosed, and
within that enclosure I raised my aviary, and my poultry thrived very
well there, seemed to like their habitation, and grew very fat.

My wife and I took much delight in visiting and feeding them, and it was
a fine diversion also to my boys; but at the end of summer, when all
the other birds took their annual flight, away went every one of my
new-raised brood with them, and one of my old cocks, the rest of the old
set remaining very quiet with me all the winter. The next summer, when
my chicks of that year grew up a little, I cut their wings, and by that
means preserved all but one, which I suppose was either not cut so close
as the rest, or his wings had grown again. From this time I found, by
long experience, that not two out of a hundred that had once wintered
with me would ever go away, though I did not cut their wings; but all of
the same season would certainly go off with the wild ones, if they could
any ways make a shift to fly. I afterwa