213 



perieiice " — which the reader often possesses as 

 much of as the authors who presume to instruct him. 



Unfortunately, while Dr. Creswell's contributions 

 to the science of aviculture have been heartily 

 welcomed b}^ a considerable minority of bird-keepers, 

 the majority still view them either with indifference 

 or, ^ with hostility. He has met the fate of all re- 

 formers, and roused against himself all the prejudice, 

 ignorance, and conservatism of the "birdy" world. 

 This is disappointing, and makes one rather sick of 

 one's fellow aviculturists as a bod}' — but after all it is 

 natural. It is hard for those who have posed as lead- 

 ing lights to see their most cherished practice shewn 

 to be folly, their " science" to be nescience, and their 

 "advice" to be a mere blind leading of the blind. 

 While for the rank and file, the new teaching has not 

 the attractiveness of the old — it does not appeal in 

 the same way to that love of quackery which is innate 

 in most of us, that delight in giving our birds some- 

 thing out of a bottle, that human failing which once 

 made homoeopath}^ fashionable. A bird physician 

 who tells the lady who consults him about her sick 

 bird that neither he nor anyone else can say with cer- 

 taint}^ what it is suffering from — and that, if he could 

 tell, in all probability nothing could be done to relieve 

 it — but that by treating her still healthy birds in the 

 way he advises she will preserve them from a like 

 fate — such a man will never be so popular as one who 

 tells her, with all the confidence of ignorance, and 

 without even seeing the bird, that it is suffering from 

 "surfeit" or some other disease which has no exist- 

 ence in bird nature, and advises her to put so many 

 drops of something in its drinking water. 



This is bad enough, but what is even worse is 

 the half-heartedness of many on Dr. Creswell's side. 

 These know that Dr. Creswell is in the right, but fail 

 to appreciate the importance of the controversy as 



