177 



mischief, leave drugs alone, and trust to measures 

 which they can regulate, cleanliness, fresh air, 

 warmth, and good food, and give nature a chance. If 

 they are not content to rest there, let them at least 

 grasp this elementary fact, that if they desire to 

 administer drugs with the hope of doing anything but 

 mischief, the\^ must first settle how they are going to 

 give an accurate dose at regular frequent intervals. 

 This is no easy matter ; roughly speaking a man 

 weighs about three thousand times as much as a 

 Canary, and to begin with, that might be taken as a 

 measure of the proportional dose of a drug, and as 

 birds require more frequent feeding than men, so 

 drugs should be given at shorter intervals. If any 

 fancier will solve the difficulty of administering a 

 small dose of any drug to a bird every hour he will 

 have taken the first step — the ver}^ first step — toward 

 a rational medical treatment of birds, and as far as I 

 know, no one has ever taken that preliminar}^ step yet. 



(To be conii7inedj. 



