289 



guilty of drawing a hard and fast line where in reality 

 none exists. All the birds we have hitherto dis- 

 cussed, even including most of the Parrots, and 

 perhaps all of them, are more or less insectivorous. 

 If therefore what our friends call the hardier of these 

 can exist in comfort and health without insects and 

 without egg, as we have seen, for many years, and 

 are moreover still more hardy without the latter 

 than with it, then there ought to be no insuperable 

 difficulty in realizing that the '* delicate insectivorous " 

 species would be even less delicate when the egg 

 is withheld from them also, especially when we 

 see that beyond this they already can, and in most 

 cases do, get all that is necessary to them while 

 captive in the way of insect food. 



Needless to say the cathedral utterance alluded 

 to is launched forth by my critics with the usual 

 backing of what is called " experience," and with 

 nothing else to support it. We shall presently see 

 what this is worth. Of course no one can afford to 

 deny the value of real experience— that is of the record 

 of facts. But for the purpose of correct and close 

 reasoning— if this is to be productive of incontestable 

 conclusions, the facts must be many, and they must be 

 fac^s in the logical sense of the word " fact." In 

 addition to this all other possible factors that might 

 make for the supposed conclusion must be absolutely 

 eliminated, that we may thereby avoid the too common 

 pitfall of the post hoc, propter hoc argument. The 

 tendency to generalize from only a few particulars, 

 and to add to these fev/ a further admixture of what 

 are only opinions,-'" or indeed sometimes only hopes, is 

 unfortunately too often found among writers on 

 aviculture. An amusing instance of this occurred not 

 long ago where a writer gravely attributed the recovery 

 of the tail end of his lot of birds from septic fever to 



* "Few men think, all have opinions."— Hobbes. 



