128 



water in lliese latter has not been frozen at all, the 

 bath in the exposed central one has been a solid block 

 of ice, and on the occasions of heavy gales of wind 

 the feeding hoppers are often blown off the little table 

 in the centre. 



The fact of the matter is that most birds would be 

 found to live (and live comfortably) out in the open, 

 but for the inborn distrust in our minds of that gift 

 which is the best of all — fresh air. As I have said 

 before, cold in itself is nothing to birds as long as 

 they are in moderately good health, but oxygen and 

 exercise are everything. Even those who admit that 

 a Zebra Finch is hardy only do so because it happens 

 to be cheap, and because therefore they have not so 

 much minded the making of an experiment with it. 

 Probabh' if some of the rarer birds could be freely 

 obtained for half-a-crown we should soon hear of their 

 being relegated to the rank of "hardy" birds, but 

 since they are high priced owing to various difficulties 

 attending their importation, they are for the most part 

 religiously kept in heated and more or less ill 

 ventilated aviaries ; consequently the resulting heavy 

 death rate naturally stamps them as " delicate," and 

 "difficult to acclimatize." With the insight beneath 

 the surface given to me by pathological work, it is 

 easy to detect the inappropriate nature of the word 

 "acclimatized" in most of the instances of its use in 

 relation to foreign birds. When one comes to think — 

 to really think — one sees plainly enough that acclima- 

 tization means the adaptation of themselves on the 

 part of the birds to the new environment of altered 

 seasons for breeding and moulting. It means nothing 

 more, since it is not so much change of climate that 

 the poor things have to fight against when they are 

 first in a European country : in their own natural 

 habitat, however hot it may be at times, they are 

 obliged to withstand th^ most startling changes of 



