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twice before I tried it on with an enraged Cockatoo or an angry

Macaw) are very spiteful, and will attack and freely bite those

who attend to their wants. Thickly smear a finger with

the soap, and place it within their reach. If they bite, hold the

finger again and again up to their beak, until they flee in abject

terror and consternation. I do not know from personal

experience, but have an idea that a good mouthful of soft soap is

not altogether a pleasing morsel to the taste. But it is only soap,

and cannot really hurt either the birds or their plumage.


Again, when a Parrakeet gnaws wood-work which you do not

wish to have injured, smear the same with soft soap ; and the

offender will usually turn his attentions elsewhere. And mice

may often be successfully deterred from climbing by a liberal

application of the same delicious compound to their customary

upward path.


THE SATIN-BIRD.—I am surprised that Mr. Page

(p. 69) should give the height of the Satin-bird’s bower as 12 inches.

I11 my garden here I have had them repeatedly nearly or fully

double that height. Probably it depends on the sticks

obtainable, for birds of this species will run off with remarkably

long ones when they have the chance. A 2-3 foot poplar rod, or

shoot of the year, they will carry off with ease. Every spring,

while 1 was pruning my trees, these birds used to come up

behind me—always dead behind me—and steal the loppings of

every size, with which they would cautiously sneak off with the

most intense glee, more than half of their delight being caused I

suspect by the wicked thought in their knavish hearts that I did

not see them and that they were diddling me. If not disturbed,

they will keep on adding to the same bower, year after year, until

it becomes a huge affair.


As regards their moult (p. 7), my Satin-birds, of which I

have had three, used to moult regularly every year just the same as

any other health}’' and moderately hardy bird. The male used to

take two annual moults to gain the adult plumage, but each

moult was complete in itself and was not in the smallest degree

protracted. I quite fail to see why it should be otherwise, for it

is not like a Weaver or other bird coming into colour every year

at the breeding season, but an ordinary case of a bird moulting

into the adult plumage. Dr. Butler’s way of putting it, that the

change of colour occupies just a year (p. 8), by a kind of octave

counting is in a sense correct, but perhaps a little misleading.

By one moult it becomes a parti-coloured bird, by the succeeding

annual moult it completes the plumage of the adult male. That



