Chapter IV.

1. All the pigeon tribe, as the phatta and trygon, generally produce two eggs; the trygon and the phatta are those which generally lay three. The pigeon lays, as I said, at every season; the trygon and the phatta in the spring, and not more than twice. The second brood are hatched when the first has been destroyed, for many birds destroy them. It sometimes lays three, as I have said, but it never brings out more than two young ones, and sometimes only one, the remaining egg is always addled. Very few birds begin to lay before they are a year old; but when they have once begun to lay, they all, as we may say, naturally contain eggs to the end of their life, though it is not easy to see them in some birds, from their small size.

2. The pigeon usually produces one male and one female, and of these the male is often hatched first; and having laid an egg one day, she omits many days and then lays another. The male sits during a portion of the day, and the female during the night. The first young one is hatched and able to fly within twenty days, and the egg is billed on the day before it is hatched; both the old birds keep the young ones warm for some time, as they do the eggs. During the time of bringing up their young the female is fiercer than the male: this is also the case in other animals. They produce young ten times in a year, and sometimes eleven times; those in Egypt even twelve times. The cock and hen birds copulate within the year, for they do this at the end of six months.

3. And some say that the phatta and trygon are matured when three months old, and they consider their great numbers as a proof of this. The female contains her eggs fourteen days, and then sits upon them fourteen more; in fourteen days after this the young ones fly so well that it is difficult to catch them. The phatta lives, as they say, forty years; the partridge more than sixteen years. The pigeon, after having brought out her young, lays again in thirty days.