49 



The last difficulty I have to mention is one that, I am 

 thankful to say, is seldom met with in the case of foreign 

 birds; I mean "faking." This, in my experience, is 

 confined to the removal of dark feathers from White Java 

 Sparrows, and as it cannot be detected the judge need 

 not trouble himself about it. 



C. S. Simpson, L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S. 



ON BIRD BUYING. 



People who are not extravagant by nature must 

 lose a most enormous amount of pleasure. I often 

 wonder — but my wonder is not mixed with envy, for I 

 would ten times rather have my own spendthriftiness and 

 the joy of it, though it does leave me at times without a 

 half-penny or more than a rag on my back— at people 

 who carefully consider all sorts of things before they buy 

 what they want. I even know a lady who hesitates at 

 spending half-a-crown on a bird treat, for as she says 

 herself, " Although one has the money doing nothing, 

 there mighthe: a better use for it ! " So much conscience 

 as that would make me quite ill if I owned it. There are 

 persons^mothers, and husbands, and so on — who never 

 buy themselves a single thing, and this is the only 

 reflection that occasionally pulls me up in my wild 

 career, when I reflect on one of the reasons why they don't 

 — but all this is too intimately personal. 



Well, is it not a fine joy to get a little birdy parcel 

 by the railway ? (One might almost suppose that the 

 railway was a kind entity, and wished to give you pleasure 

 by the way that it lengthens out your anticipation). 

 When yon know you are already full up, and that the 

 new bird means a new cage, although you yesterday 

 assured someone who objected — someone always does — 

 that 5^ou Could make ample room for it with the Wax- 

 bills, and when you also know that you will have to 

 borrow long before next month's money arrives because 

 you have bought it, the pleasure is enhanced by ever so 

 much. When I have one bird of a sort, I always want 



