I.^I 



So much for our general principles : now let us 

 see what with propriety may be urged against them, 

 or rather against their adoption at any indiscriminate 

 time of year in the case of certain individual birds. 

 It is manifest that a bird which has been kept for 

 weeks or even days under the horrible conditions I 

 have alluded to cannot be in possession of great 

 resistive power against either disease germs (even if 

 they are not already present) or the depressing effects 

 of severe cold, although it is true that we must not 

 measure a bird's resistance to cold by our own, seeing 

 that while our normal body temperature is only 98.6 

 degrees, that of a Canary or other small bird is the 

 extraordinary one of about 108. 



Therefore if the bird has been landed here late in 

 the autumn it would scarcely be fair to transport it at 

 once to an open garden aviary, and so straightway 

 expose it to the ennervating influences of our 

 November fogs and December rains. If it were 

 imported in March I should not so much mind turn- 

 ing it out then — with this one proviso, however — that 

 the weather were dry and bright, and the aviary some- 

 what sheltered from the east wind. The risk in this 

 case would not be so great, but there is none at all if 

 we wait till April or May before we make our annual 

 purchases. That is the best time from all points of 

 view to acquire small foreigners and to introduce 

 them into a roomy garden aviary. 



I ought to say here that although the foregoing 

 remarks have been primarily written with regard to seed 

 eaters, they apply with equal force to those birds which 

 we call insectivorous. Provide these with both fresh 

 and dried insectile food, to which has been added a 

 proper proportion of vegetable matter, and do away 

 with the disastrous ^%% food which is in no way at all 

 a substitute for insects, and we shall then find them in 

 every respect as hardy as their seed-eating brethren — 



