Correspondence.



81



feed a Shama caged in the house too simply. Raw meat is distinctly bad ;

if necessai')-, give him a little cooked meat (say a scrap of cold mutton) very

carefully scraped and triturated ; and, for the present at any rate, stop the

mealworms. Preserved j’olk of egg, in flakes, is better than ordinary hard-

boiled egg. Spiders, earwigs, woodlice, small cockroaches, &c., are good.

From time to time, place a little fluid magnesia in the drinking water.


Occasionally give him a grape, cut up into small pieces.


Reginald Phidripps.



THE NEW MEDAL RULE.


Sr,—T he Executive have acted ultra vires in making a new Medal


Rule.


Rule io. of the Society says: “The COUNCIL (but not a Com¬

mittee of the Council) shall have power to alter and add to the Rules, from

time to time, in any manner they may think fit.”


I happened to say to several members, including at least one member

op the Council, that the Hon. Walter Rothschild had kindly lent me a pair

of Brown’s Parrakeets, and that they were sitting.


In the next number of the Magazine the new Rule, re Medal,

appeared, and I feel justified in saying it was the outcome of petty jealousy.

Had I not mentioned the fact that the Brown’s had been lent me, I

venture to think we should not have had this new Rule. I am confident it

was made for my special benefit, although I am sure I was conscious of no

wrong, or I should never have spoken so openly op Mr Rothschild's kindness

to me. C. D. Farrar.


[Mr, Farrar refers to the Rules which govern the Society itself; they

have nothing to do with the Medal, which has always been entirely under the

control of the Executive Committee.


We can positively state that the new Medal Rule was not suggested

by any member of the Council to whom Mr. Farrar had mentioned the fact of

a pair of Parrakeets being lent him b)' the Hon. W. Rothschild, neither was

the fact made known to the Committee by any such member. When the

Committee conceived the idea of awarding a Medal for the breeding of birds

that had never before bred in the United Kingdom, it was never their

intention that the Medal should be awarded to borrowed birds. It would

be most unfair to those who, perhaps, spend a considerable sum in

purchasing some rare species of bird and hope some day to induce them to

breed and thus merit the Society’s Medal, if another member can go and

borrow an acclimatized pair of the same species, and, by inducing them to

breed, gain the Medal. We leave it to our members to judge as to whether

the new Rule is fair or not, and we have little doubt that their verdict will

be in the affirmative. This correspondence must now close.—E d.]



