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action and eflfects of the everywhere present septic 

 bacteria, would have escaped had they been without 

 this article of food. 



But quite apart from all this, and also apart from 

 the fact that on general grounds, connected with the 

 physiological process involved, it imposes too great a 

 strain on the digestion and assimilation of captive 

 seed and insect eating birds, the &%% is not in any way 

 necessary for them, either in the adult or nestling 

 stage of existence, in spite of all that may be said to 

 the contrary. And moreover there is no need for any 

 special substitute for it, any more than there is in our 

 own case when giving up any bad or unnecessary 

 habit. If it is desired to breed extra large birds this 

 can more surely and more permanently be attained to 

 by taking advantage of the natural laws of heredity, 

 and by breeding from only those parents which shew 

 a natural variation in the direction of increased size, 

 than by feeding up the birds which are intended for 

 stock and then depending on the broken reed of a 

 supposed transmission of acquired characters. As an 

 instance of what is meant by this, let us look for a 

 moment at the Lancashire Canaries. Is it egg feeding 

 that has been responsible for their great bulk ? Or is 

 it the steady and continuous artificial selection that 

 has been adopted for so many generations by their 

 devotees ? If it is the ^%%, then why have the German 

 Canary and the Border Fancy remained so small ? In 

 the first of these two latter varieties there has been 

 up till very lately no selection at all as to physical 

 properties, and even now this selection is only of very 

 limited range : in the second the selection has been in 

 the direction of at least not increasing the size of the 

 birds. So here we see that the ^zz has made the 

 German no bigger than it has ever been, and although 

 the Border is " literally stuffed with ^%% " (as I am told 

 by some of its most prominent fanciers) it is not 



