2o8 



gars and other Parrakeets, and in each case they have 

 attacked communities fed in this manner. In Vol. II. 

 of Bird Notes, pp. 238 and 239, will be found a concise 

 reference to the septic tendencies of this food, and in 

 the same volume and the next will also be found some 

 instructive correspondence on the subject. 



I may perhaps venture to point out another lesson 

 to be learnt from this case. Had the fair owner of 

 these birds sought competent advice at the onset of 

 the epidemic, instead of leaving it till the end of the 

 season, she would have saved the great majority of her 

 stock and would not be compelled to say that "such 

 heavy losses are most disheartening." And what are 

 we to think of the perversity of those, who not being 

 medical men, and knowing absolutely nothing either of 

 diseases or their causes, still persist in advising avicul- 

 turists to their detriment? Was Legros a physician 

 simply because he kept many slaves? 



EGG FOOD, A PRO AND A CON. :— In the 



Aviadhiral Magazine for October there appeared the 

 following letter : — 



Sir, — On the 26tli August my hen Chinese Quail laid a 

 thin-shelled blue &<g% upon the sand of my smaller outdoor 

 aviary, and iu the most sunny part of it. My Gouldian-finches, 

 which have a second nest of young ones in the aviary (I fear the 

 young of the previous nests have all died), broke a hole in the top 

 of the Quail's egg, and I watched them for some minutes eating 

 the shell and sucking up the raw albumen, heedless of the 

 spectre of septicseniia with which our cage birds have of late 

 3'ears been confronted. 



It seems a strange thing, when one considers that the 

 Gouldian-finch never touches soft food, to find that even it can- 

 not resist the delight in that pabulum which we are expected to 

 believe is so serious a menace to bird life, that none but an 



