Correspondence, Notes, etc.



253



sucks the skin dry. “Billie” is always on the look-out for me, when I go

into the aviary, and I think will get very tame. The pale patches of blue

on him look as if they had been roughly daubed with a brush — the blue is

not a green, but more a French blue shade.


Mr. Rothera may be interested to hear that the Lavender Finch I

bred, and for which I was awarded a medal by the Society two years ago (it

not having been bred in Britain before), has always been a veiy sooty

shade of grey, and does not seem as if it would ever be any lighter. The red

also seems darker. This little Lavender is, I think, a hen, and is a strong

bird. It has never ailed anything, until the last few weeks, but it seems

about right again now. For some time its head has been rather bare of

feathers. I have quite come to the conclusion that tiny birds suffer from

this in an aviary as well as in a cage, and that when a bird is once in such a

condition it is very doubtful if it is ever really well feathered again.


This Lavender Finch looks so dark by my three others as to seem

almost a different variety. .Some years ago I had a very dark adult hen,

but hardly so dark as the one I bred.


R. Anderson.


The following reply has been sent to Miss Alder son :


I think there can be no doubt that the bird brought by a sailor

“ from India,” is what the Zoological .Society’s list calls the “ Brazilian

Blue-Grosbeak ” (Gniraca cyanea) ; and that the sailor, in the lax language of

his kind, said that it came from “The Indies,” meaning perhaps Trinidad,

or even Venezuela!


A. G. BuTEER.



THE PROPOSED GENERAL INDEX.



The requisite number of subscribers to the proposed

index to the first eight volumes of this journal not being forth¬

coming, the idea of publishing it will, for the present, be

abandoned.



