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eye of the master to rove round his treasures, like a hen sitting

on her eggs. The floor is—but there, I will not shock your

feelings by entering into particulars, but insect life is not absent.


Though I cite this particular shop as a typical one, it is,

remember, a specimen of the highest class. The owner takes

ever)' care, that lies in his power, of the birds that form his

stock-in-trade—giving them rations of suitable food and waiter :

but this is not so with all firms. I have seen some shops away

dowm East where the unfortunate birds are expected to live on

anything—an expectation the birds by no means realize—for they

usually die.


Although, as I have said, the bird shop at its best is a

place, as Mr. Tracy Tupmau would say, “ more fitted for a

wounded heart than for one still able to feast on social joys,” it

is a luxurious institution compared to a home-coming ship.

This has one hundred times the danger and a thousand times

the discomfort of any bird shop I ever heard of. Any bird living

through the horrors of the homeward passage deserves great

credit for his courage and enterprise, and may safely be regarded

as illustrating Darwin’s theory of the “ survival of the fittest.”


Every bird dealer looks down on every other bird dealer,

and every other bird dealer looks down upon him. David once

said in his haste that all men are liars ; most bird dealers say it

at their leisure of each other. I do not think that if the whole

of Mr. Pitman’s School of Shorthand were present, they could

take down the whole of the crimes which one bird dealer will

lay at another’s door. This description certainly hits off the

character of an inhabitant of Sodom and Gomorrah : and one

could really think that those two historic cities had not been, as

the Biblical records tell us—destroyed—but merely removed to

East London. I really think that some future Revision Com¬

mittee should substitute the w r ord ‘ transported ’ for ‘ destroyed.’

From their own account of the state of trade, and the awful and

unparalleled series of losses they have had, you would, if you

were of a trustful disposition, regard the bird dealer with an

admiring awe—as the man who has solved the problem of how to

keep a shop and live on the losses. Nay, not only to live but do

well.


A dealer I knew once told me he had bred almost every

bird I named, “ in his back shop.” It was all peyfectly easy.


“ My dear Sir,” he said in his most impressive manner, “ anyone

can do it, if he tries.” Mr. Hutchinson, in his “Ten Years

Wanderings among the Ethiopians,” tells that, at Fernando Po,



