140 



though the authorship is, of course, an open secret, it appeared 

 as an unsigned article. 



It is to be regretted that the controversy as to the use of 

 egg as a food for birds should have taken such a personal turn. 

 It would seem to be a subject on which good men might agree 

 to dififer, and if the principals in the dispute had both adopted 

 a more conciliator}- tone their arguments would have lost none 

 of their weight, and much friction, which always means loss of 

 power, would have been avoided. However, the personal 

 element having been introduced cannot now be eliminated, 

 and we therefore think it better, once for all, to make our 

 position in the matter plain. 



We fully recognise the important services which have been 

 rendered to aviculture by Dr. Butler, and we respect his 

 knowledge and ability as an ornithologist. It is due to him, 

 probably more than to any other man, that the gulf between 

 the aviculturists and the cabinet ornithologists, which formerly 

 existed, has been bridged. He was truly the pioneer of scien- 

 tific aviculture. Some ten or twelve years ago the great 

 majority of bird keepers almost prided themselves on their 

 ignorance of classification and structure — while the ornitho- 

 logists despised them as a set of ignorant " bird fanciers," Dr. 

 Butler's writings have done much to alter all this. His services 

 in this behalf alone would entitle him to the respect of the 

 avicultural world. 



But for Dr. Butler as an authority upon the feeding and 

 general treatment of birds in captivity we cannot express the 

 same admiration. We believe, and we always have believed, 

 tliat this practical side of aviculture is emphatically not his 

 forle. All through his writings on this subject there are the 

 same defects— a hasty arrival at conclusions from insufficient 

 premisses, a constant laudation of some supposed panacea, (at 

 one time Abrahams' food, at another bread crumbs — and so on) 

 — and, worse than all, a dangerous and unwarranted assump- 

 tion of knowledge on medical and semi-medical subjects. 



The fact is that the aviculture of the present day — the 

 aviculture taught by the Foreign Bird Club— is scientific in a 

 fuller and deeper sense than the "scientific aviculture " of ten 

 years ago. Science then meant, to aviculturists, simply orni- 

 thology. Now we understand by "scientific aviculture" the 

 application to aviculture of all branches of knowledge which 

 have any bearing upon it, and especially modern medical 

 science. It appears to us that Dr. Butler, and some other well- 

 known writers on aviculture, have not yet fully awaked to this 



