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supply its place. Dry sponge cake, crumbled, is 

 generally eaten readily by all birds which will take 

 ^gg — personally, I am rather suspicious of sponge- 

 cake, for when it is good it contains a considerable 

 quantity of egg — but crushed sweet biscuit is taken 

 almost as readily. A little "insect meal " or some 

 ants' eggs ma}^ be mixed with the sponge cake or 

 biscuit. Colifichet, a kind of gluten bread made in 

 France, is a useful and wholesome food — it is sold in 

 small horse-shoe shaped " rolls," which can be hung 

 up in the aviary or cage for the birds to peck at. A 

 ver}^ small quantit3^of milk sop has been recommended, 

 but if it is used care must be taken that pieces of it 

 are not left in the cage or aviary to get sour. It is a 

 good plan to supply any food likely to turn sour in a 

 small pan placed inside a larger one — such as a soup 

 plate — fragments thrown out of the inner pan will 

 generally be caught in the outer one, and both can be 

 removed together and washed. It should be remem- 

 bered that milk-sop has a very laxative effect on birds, 

 and I do not think an habitual use of it is even advis- 

 able, I very much doubt whether the advantages 

 of milk sop are not more than outweighed by its 

 dangers, except in the case of Ivories and similar 

 birds. For reasons which Dr. Creswell has pointed 

 out, it is desirable to restrict the diet of birds to such 

 food as will not undergo any septic change, and it is 

 impossible for any moist food to fulfil this condition, 

 therefore dr}' food should be used, as far as possible. 

 Plasmon powder is a highly nitrogenous food which 

 seems worth experimenting with : a little mixed with 

 powdered biscuit forms a food quite as nourishing 

 and stimulating as the usual egg mixture Birds in 

 an outdoor aviary — when it is fairly large and not 

 too crowded — no doubt obtain a quite appreciable 

 amount of live insect food, and are consequently 

 more independent of artificial additions to their seed 

 diet than are birds kept indoors. 



