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temperature. What is so fatal to our new visitors are 

 the insanitary conditions to which they are exposed 

 from the moment they are caught, up to, and indeed 

 very often after, tlie time they are placed in the hands 

 of their ultimate purchasers. Thousands are caught 

 on their native shores, hundreds are landed here : of 

 these hundreds two-thirds perish in the dealers' 

 stuffy and dirty shops, and four-fifths of the remainder 

 die directly after the railway journey to the confiding 

 amateurs who have sent cash in advance, leaving at a 

 generous estimate but a tenth part of those landed to 

 console the heart of the much disappointed fanciers, 

 who, unable to discard pernicious traditions, and in- 

 fluenced in a wrong direction by the reflection that they 

 have to no purpose spent much money in the past, just 

 complete in their heated and comparatively oxygenless 

 bird rooms the evil work begun by the catchers and 

 continued by the shippers and dealers. The so-called 

 acclimatized specimen.s are merely those which have 

 survived the unhealthy conditions attaching to their 

 loss of liberty : when they have shewn their resistive 

 power by remaining alive they have j^et to begin the 

 process of real acclimatization, sometimes taking as 

 much as two or three years before it is finally 

 accomplished. For instance, I have three Grey Sing- 

 ing Finches, which have this year for the first time 

 started their moult at the proper season, although they 

 have been in my aviaries a little over three years. 



To give my readers an idea of the special nature 

 of the influence which fresh air exercises on the animal 

 organism, let me here quote a recent writer whose 

 words deserve thoughtful attention on the part of 

 bird lovers, although they were primarily written in 

 reference to consumption and another dread disease. 



Dr. Douty says : — " there are a great many, 



" medical men and others, who because they have not 

 " thought about it have an idea that the open air has 



