332



Some Expeiiences oj an Avicullurist.



nostrils, and continue the lime water treatment, which to be

effective must need a considerable time, and the artificial stiffen¬

ing of the bill would at least enable the bird to continue on

ordinary seed instead of soft food, which some birds decline to

eat readily. I feel sure this experiment would prove successful.

Less than a week after, I lost its companion, I found it jammed

tightly between a large tree trunk and the wall of the house, a

position from which it had been unable to extricate itself. This

was the beginning of another long run of misfortunes, as I shortly

afterwards found the old cock White-crowned Pigeon with its

head eaten off, evidently by a rat or some member of the weasel

family. I made a thorough search through the aviary, and at

last discovered a rat had entered the place through the floor of

the stone-built inner house. I had the floor taken up and a thick

layer of cement and broken glass laid down and the flags re¬

placed. Two days afterwards I found the earth thrown up in

the wooden shelter, the animal had tunnelled beneath the cement

and come out close to the seed vessels, from which he took toll

for some days, as he refused to enter traps, however carefully

they were laid. Eventually I got him by opening a dead bird

and inserting arsenic, laying the bait out of reach of any of the

birds, though I do not suppose they would have touched it, but

the greatest care ought always to be exercised when using poison.

I then dug down below the level of the cement and sank half¬

inch netting to a depth of two feet the whole length of the old

building, feeling certain I had now a barrier against the invasion

of rodents, but shoitly afterwards found another White-crown

had been partly eaten, and though I made a most minute search

over the whole floor area of my large aviary I could find no signs

of a hole. Will it be believed, that almost every day for about

three weeks there was a fresh victim, notwithstanding traps,

poisoned birds, meal and lures of all descriptions. He took

every one of my remaining doves before sampling the others,

eating the head and breast portions only, and followed on by

destroying a Golden Plover and two Lapwings; several of the

smaller birds were found eaten on the nests, or rather the few

feathers and feet left there would seem to prove this to be the

case. I watched the place for hours together, but never once



