49 



l£&itorial. 



AN EPIDEMIC AMONG WOODPIGEONS:— The 



reference made by my correspondent " Enquirens" 

 in our last issue affords a good instance of what Mr. 

 E. Kay Robinson so rightly deprecated in his remarks 

 on Bird Surgery, when it will be remembered he spoke 

 very strongly about the habit of ''jumping to con- 

 clusions" being the means of imbuing thousands of 

 readers with wrong ideas, and so of making it " difficult 

 for the average reader to get a proper understandingof 

 nature." 



A gamekeeper, writing to The Country Side, 

 mentions an epidemic of fatal disease among Wood- 

 pigeons, and advances the opinion that it was caused 

 by eating beech mast. Indeed, he says there is 

 "strong evidence " to this effect, inasmuch as he has 

 always noticed the health of the pigeons to be good 

 in those years when acorns were plentiful. But is this 

 evidence? or only "jumping to conclusions"? 



If he had shown that he had identified the 

 particular disease — that it was only due to a food, — 

 that there were but two foods, acorns and beech mast, 

 which these birds ever ate, — that acorns and beech 

 mast were never co-existent the same year, — tliat the 

 disease never appeared in the acorn year, and always 

 did in the mast year, — then, and then only, could we 

 say there was any evidence in the direction indicated. 

 At present the best we can say in its favour is that 

 the conclusion arrived at on such meagre premisses 

 is highly improbable. 



But let us review the facts of the case as detailed. 

 Last autumn acorns were scarce, and the bodies of the 



