The following year our choughs were once again observed building a nest in the same tower, and in due course our eyes were gladdened by the sight of eggs lying peacefully in the nest, at which we used to peer through a trap-door which could be opened without arousing the choughs’ alarm. At last came the happy day when one little fledgling actually made its appearance; at last we seemed certain of being able to announce that we had achieved an ornithological record. From time to time, however, further peeps at the new arrival began to disconcert and puzzle us, for its plumage of the most unchoughlike character did not at all accord with that of its parents; and one fine day, alas, the dreadful truth was at last forced upon us—the choughs had hatched out a little starling! In the end everything was explained, for, on investigation, it was discovered that our pair of choughs were both of them hens—the reason that the two eggs had never produced offspring! The two poor birds, evidently realising that their only hope of a family lay in adoption, had the next year annexed the eggs of some unfortunate starling, and then hatched out the little alien, whose arrival in the world was the cause of our disappointment and disgust. At our place in Sussex, just on the borders of Hampshire, I had a very large garden, and here, besides greenhouses, was an aviary in which were kept many different kinds of birds. I do not know, however, that aviaries are ever a great success; it is far more pleasant, indeed, to see birds at liberty like my choughs, who used to stalk about the grounds as if the whole place belonged to them, as did also the poor storks; these latter, however, always looked melancholy, owing, I suppose, to the permanent state of indigestion produced by their partiality for dining off broken crockery. I was very proud of my garden, in which most of the distinguished botanists and biologists of that day, including Sir Joseph Hooker and Charles Darwin, took a great interest. In my greenhouses I had at one time a large collection of insectivorous plants, specimens of which I used occasionally to send to Mr. Darwin, who carried on a correspondence with me about these curious things, in which he was very much interested. I went once to pay him a visit at his house at Down, in Kent, but unluckily found him suffering from one of those attacks from which he perpetually suffered, he having never perfectly recovered from the terrible sea-sickness which tortured him during his voyage on the _Beagle_. In consequence of his indisposition I was only able to talk to him for a short while, but, nevertheless, he told me a great deal about the digestive powers of the secretion of the _drosera_ or sun-dew, which, as he had actually proved by experiment, acted upon albuminous compounds in exactly the same manner as does the gastric juice of mammals.