THE



119



Hvtcultural flftac^asme,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



New Series .—VO L. I. — No. 4 .—All rights reserved.



FEB., 1903.



EDITORIAL.



With the appearance of the one hundredth monthly

number of the Avicultural Magazine, the members may, we

think, look back with satisfaction on the progress the Society

has made, and congratulate themselves on the possession of a

journal which has done more than any other publication to

encourage scientific aviculture. As we look at the eight bound

volumes on the bookshelf, the eighth fully twice the thickness of

the first, as we notice the steady increase in the number of

members,—173 in November, 1895, and 331 at the present time,

or the number of illustrations which now appear as compared

with a few years ago, it is at once apparent that steady and sure

progress has been made. But we must not consider that we are yet

at the top of the ladder, or that, like Alexander the Great, we

have 110 more worlds to conquer; surely we are still in our

infancy ; much, very much remains to be done by aviculturists,

in the way of studying the life habits of birds.


The Natural History Museum at South Kensington

contains thousands of skins of birds, from every part of the

globe, but how much is known of the living habits, of the

plumage of the nestlings, of the changes from summer to winter

plumage, of the many little items which make the difference

between the living and the dead ? Travellers may teach us much ;

but it is left to the aviculturist to teach his fellow bird-lover—his

fellow ornithologist—many things that could not otherwise be

known. We use the term “ ornithologist ” advisedly, for we do not

consider that there should be a breach between the ornithologist



