238 



understand wln^ there is not one of tliese naturally 

 long-lived birds in everx' house in the conntry, as there 

 would be if every bullet found its billet. Tens of 

 thousands are caught ; thousands just manage to 

 scrape through the quick steam passage (in the old 

 wind jamming days onlj^ the very strongest arrived in 

 England, the rest died on the way) ; and of these 

 thousands, hundreds carry their septicaemia just long 

 enough to get out of the dealers' shops into the private 

 house, and a week after that there are left alive only 

 tens, comprising in part those that have recovered 

 from the disease and in part those that have by their 

 own innate resistive power repelled it altogether. 



The Budgerigar, Cockateel, and Redrump have 

 also gone through all this, and indeed are still going 

 through it, but the survivors, being small and 

 altogether more amenable to family life in large cage 

 or small aviary, have been adopted by us as breeding 

 birds, with the result that they have made a beginning, 

 and a well-marked one too, towards the attaining of 

 immunity against the ubiquitotis pest of captive bird 

 life. That their death rate is not more than it is is 

 greatly due to the fact that so far it has not been 

 thought necessary to teach them to cultivate a taste 

 for egg food, although the stupid fad for giving them 

 soaked bread^'" when breeding is responsible for a good 

 deal of the mortalit}^ that occurs among the breeding 

 birds and their 3'oung. x\nother reason for septicaemia 

 appearing among these birds more frequently than it 

 otherwise would do is that breeders (to " infuse fresh 

 blood") occasionally seek to reinforce their stock by 

 throwing in some freslil}^ imported birds, fondh^ 



* // bread is necessary for youngf birds it should be given to tlie 

 parents in the dry state, audit will be sufficiently moistened by them before 

 being given to the young:. When it is moistened beforehand it only serves 

 as a breeding ground and nursery while in the saucer for the septic bacillus, 

 and so sets up disease. 



