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netting. This was fastened at intervals to iron rods 

 which bent over oiUivards at the top. By the way, I 

 have a friend who has a similar arrangement, but 

 reverses the bending — so that to come in over it is not 

 so difficult, but to get out in a hurry is not so easy. 

 A powerful well-trained bull-terrier completes the 

 arrangement, and the results may be left to the im- 

 agination of the reader. Well, I have no bull-terrier, 

 and I may say at once that while the ordinary strolling 

 cat is kept off, there seem to be some cats which, to get 

 at the birds, will come over almost any obstacle, and 

 at their hands I have suffered much. When they first 

 began to find and bother this aviary, in which were 

 chiefly British finches, I lost one or two a day. The 

 fatal time was the very early morning. Just as it gets 

 light master puss comes raiding, and also on clear 

 moonlight nights, but I have never found them moving 

 on dark nights. My arrangement for their safety was 

 of no manner of use to the birds — for terrified by the 

 appearance of the cats they dashed to and fro quite 

 idiotically, and always ended by dashing into the jaws 

 or claws of their agile enemy, especially if the latter 

 can get on a wire roof. 



My next venture was a large aviary of iron and 

 wire. This was originally built as a pheasantry, with 

 gas-piping skeleton and corrugated iron roof and sides 

 to about one third of it. The wire was very small 

 (half-inch meshing) and described as "cat-proof," as 

 no cat could insert its paw through the meshes. It is 

 nearly eight feet high. With this erection, which has 

 about 650 cubic feet of space, I have been able to defy 

 the cats ; and although the greater part of the roof is 

 wire — owing to the height, the small mesh of the wire, 

 and the fact that the supports are iron, cats are unable 

 to climb it. If the uprights were wood they would 

 make no bones about the feat. In this aviary I planted 

 shrubs and turfed part, so that it makes as natural a 



