179 



without hesitation that I owe it all to disregarding 

 such advice and following the teaching of Nature." 

 In Bird Notes, Vol. I., page 169 we also find the follow- 

 ing, "Three Nightingales, meated off last 3'ear, ate 

 1,500 in ten days .... all made fine birds." Thus 

 Mr. Frostick. 



House flies, caught in a wire gauze trap and 

 killed by being put into the oven for half a minute, 

 are given when available and are always greedily 

 eaten. If a live fly of any kind gets into the 

 aviary it is of course only a brief life that is then its 

 portion, but bees and wasps are left severely alone. 

 Yet if any of these are thrown in when killed there is 

 always a scramble forthem, the Pekins being especially 

 eager. Mr. North, when visiting me one day, was 

 greatly surprised to see this, because he once saw a 

 Bullfinch stung to death by a living wasp. 



Among the delicacies affected by my feathered 

 friends are the various spiders, regarding which there 

 is a hoary tradition that they are a valuable " medicine" 

 for bird diseases— notably " consumption," and even 

 that marvellous tale does not exhaust their wonderful 

 virtues. One of our experts, who plumes himself on 

 being a scientific man, tells us that '' Spiders are not 

 insects, but they represent concentrated essence of 

 insects ; therefore if you give two or three spiders in 

 a day it is equivalent to much true insect food." This 

 is very remarkable. Why not import an aged Bengal 

 tiger, and slowly grind out the holocausts of its 

 countless victims to supply our starving poor with 

 meat ? Why burden armies with long trains of costly 

 transport when half-a-dozen patriarchs selected from 

 the Zoo would furnish unlimited supplies of con- 

 centrated essence of nuts and buns ? What need of 

 fiscal campaigns and royal commissions, when, thanks 

 to this physiological discovery, the whole thing thus 

 lies in a nutshell? 



