Many birds, particularly those that are prey for sportsmen, possess the faculty of skilfully dressing wounds. Some will even set bones, taking their own feathers to form the proper bandages. A French naturalist writes that on a number of occasions he has killed woodcocks that were, when shot, convalescing from wounds previously received. In every instance he found the old injury neatly dressed with down plucked from the stem feathers and skilfully arranged over the wound, evidently by the long beak of the bird. In some instances a solid plaster was thus formed, and in others bandages had been applied to wounds or broken limbs. One day he killed a bird that evidently had been severely wounded at some recent period. The wound was covered and protected by a sort of network of feathers, which had been plucked by the bird from its own body and so arranged as to form a plaster, completely covering and protecting the wounded surface. The feathers were fairly-netted together, passing alternately under and above each other and forming a textile fabric of great protective power.—Youth's Chronicle.