bird life when kept on egg is difficult to keep in health 

 in spite of its naturally great power of resistance. On 

 examination, even what is intended by my opponents 

 to be rebutting evidence only accords with this general 

 impression. One gentleman says that many years 

 ago his keeping of Warblers was not a success, but 

 that when he took to egg food he did much better with 

 tlieni. This is without doubt quite correct : egg food 

 plus cleanliness in the hands of a man should shew 

 better results in the case of the hardier survivals than 

 German Paste, soaked bread, and earthworms, plus 

 more than usually septic cages administered to by a 

 not too methodical school boy in connection with all 

 and sundry (chiefly freshly caught) that fell into his 

 hands. I have been through both phases myself. But 

 this doing better is not enough. The real question is, 

 do this gentleman's birds live anything like or 

 approaching to their natural span of life under the 

 influences engendered or at any rate encouraged 

 by Qgg'i Of course they do not. 



Let us examine some more of this rebutting 

 evidence. From a source where to my knowledge 

 there has been a pretty severe and heavy death rate 

 from septic disease among soft bills I get an argument 

 that it cannot now be the egg^ because within the last 

 two or three months the writer has discarded it in the 

 hope of mitigating the evil, and because he has a 

 Swallow that for the four years of its life has been 

 largely fed on this pabulum. This is of course an 

 apparently incontestable argument in the eyes of 

 those who, according to the philosopher just quoted, 

 are given to forming opinions without thinking. But 

 those who do think cannot feel any very overwhelm- 

 ing surprise at this particular Swallow's survival 

 when they consider the nature of the food his vSpecies 

 chiefly lives on when wild, consisting largely as it does 

 of such flies as Stojnoxys calciira7is, Musca dojnestica. 



