compared with Okii, with green droppings. On this account he was given special food and attention for weeks and, up to about a week ago, he still demanded to be hand fed, whereas Okii, many weeks ago refused, once and for all, to be hand fed with the drop- per. Chiisai, I thought, was suffering from mal-nutrition due to "inflammation of the bowels". If this were true, he should be the one, according to the hunger-mark theory, to show the trans- verse grooves in numbers, and not 0. On the otherhand, however, because of the special attention he received, and because of Okii's early decision to seek his own food, it may well be that the latter was really the undernourished bird: hence his more numerous hun- ger marks. You pays your money and you takes your choice!) To go back to the feathers: Before I ever noticed these, so called hunger marks, I had often observed on both young and moulting birds(Brownie and his numerous progeny and others) that sometimes the sheath on a sprouting feather occasionally persisted even after it had become detached from the body and sometimes formed a con- stricting ring around the vane and I wondered (without following the matter up) if this would not cause a defect in the feather at that point--and I am still wondering and still doing nothing about it. The 60 day (approx.) renewal period and the 60 (approx.) water- mark observation above referred to may be only a coincidence, but it does seem to dovetail in with the (I suppose definitely estab- lised) fact of intermittent growth on a 24 hour-cycle basis. As a harmless speculation, however, let us postulate an abso- lutely uniform rate of growth of a rectrix and a tendency for that portion of the growing feather, which has not yet emerged from the sheath, to adhere to the sheath. As an observed fact, the sheath does constrict the vane and, at least occasionally, does stick to it persistently. The uniformly growing feather will stretch the sheath until the latter either breaks or lets go; that is, the sheath alternately constrains and releases the feather. During the constricting period mechanical injury to the feather occurs, thus causin water-marks, or, in case of malnutrition: hunger-marks. In the face of known discontinuous growth, however, this seems rather pointless; although it does seem probable that there is some mechanical effect to be reckoned with. Also, the bird works on these sheaths only in the daytime, presumably, thus introduc- ing another mechanical effect on a twenty-four hour cyclic basis. This removal of sheathes with the bill from all places accessible to that instrument is especially characteristic of Rhody, the road-runner. During the moulting season, which with him is not less than 6 months, he is believed to spend hours per day working on his feathers. He treats each one separately, re- moving the sheath in the process. August 31st. Nothing out of the usual run of events on this day. September 1st and 2nd. During this period Rhody demonstrated his ability to absorb mice at shorter intervals than he has been receiving them of late. Thus, on both days, he "asked for" a second mouse less than half an hour after eating the first one. R's roosting time. On the 2nd his roosting time was observed again. At exactly 5:14 P.M. he entered his house in the roost tree. (Sunset 6:39).