3. In this manner they have usually a great affection for each other. Some females will copulate with males that are not their own mates. This bird is contentious, they fight together, and attack each other's nests, though not frequently, for although they are beaten when at a distance, they will fight to the last when near their nests; it appears to be characteristic of the pigeon, phaps, and turtle not to lean back when they drink, unless they have had sufficient. The turtle and phatta always remain faithful to the same male, and will not permit another to approach them, and the male and female share the labour of incubation. The male and female are not easily distinguished, except by their internal structure. 4. The phatta is long-lived, they have been known to live for twenty-five or thirty years, some even forty years; their claws grow when they become aged, and pigeon breeders cut them off, and in no other respect are they inferior when aged. The turtle and the pigeon, if they have been blinded by those who use them as decoy birds, will live eight years. The partridge lives fifteen years, the phaps and the turtle always build in the same places. 5. On the whole, males also live longer than females, but in these birds they say that the males die before the females; this conclusion is derived from the observation of those which are brought up in houses for decoy birds. Some persons say that cock-sparrows only live for one year, considering this as a proof, that early in the spring there are no birds with black beneath the chin; but they have it afterwards, as if none of the former birds had survived. The hen-sparrows have a longer life, for these are taken among the young birds, and are easily known by the hard portion about their bills. The turtle lives during the summer in cold places, and during the winter in warm places. The finch lives during the summer in warm places, and in cold places during winter. CHAPTER IX. 1. The heavy birds do not make nests, for it does not agree with their mode of flight, as the quail, partridge, and all such birds; but when they have made a hole in the smooth ground (for they never produce their young in any other place), they collect together some thorns and sticks for a defence against the hawks and eagles, and there lay their eggs and incubate. As soon as the young are hatched, they lead them out, because their slow flight prevents them from procuring food for them. The quail and partridge shelter their young under their wings, like the domestic fowl.