35*5 On the Influence of Diet on the Avian Death-rate.


diet as the causes of death are but few, but that although few

they are all-powerful; that having once set up the condition of

disease leading to death, they have put the sufferer practically

beyond the help of drugs: and that the only hope for the

amelioration of the existing difficulties in the way of what is

called acclimatization of foreign birds, and of keeping canaries,

etc., in health, consists in, first, a thorough reorganization of the

existing methods of importation and housing, and, secondly, the

total abolition of egg as an article of food. This, and this alone,

is the offending diet which has done so much harm ; which has

hitherto been unsuspected by our aviculturists ; and which has

been in all our own houses the while we have been seeking

to find the iniquitous something which we fondly supposed to

exist in only our neighbour’s.*


I am quite well aware that, in penning the above state¬

ment, I am administering a shock of considerable intensity to

my readers ; that it will take them a considerable time to get

over it; and that in the eyes of a few of them it would be well

that I adopted the Shakespearian advice and “ write me down an

ass.” The defence of my thesis is however too long to inflict on


fellow members in this article, but those of them that are

also members of the Foreign Bird Club will find it set out else¬

where, as I hope both fully and convincingly. Septicaemia

in its various types never will—never can—be absolutely

eradicated from the position of being a part of the environment

o [captive wild birds, whatever may be the ultimate position with

regard to it of the purely domesticated species: but by a more

thorough and intelligent adaptation of hygienic laws than exists

at present, and by a rigorous discontinuance of that article of

food which of all substances is the most prolific of the most

virulent form of its causative bacilli, it can be greatly modified

both as to its amount and its capacity for harm, f |



* And yet birds which never eat egg are as subject to disease as those which do.

When I first took up aviculture, and for several years afterwards, I only used egg for

Canaries ; but the death-rate among my other birds was far higher than it has been since

I have given egg. The experience of aviculturists throughout the civilized world for the

past century, is surely of more pxictical value than even microscopic investigation. The

discovery of the potential germs of disease in a food, does not postulate the existence of a

receptive soil to ensure their development.—A. G. B.


t Does Dr. Creswell include Preserved or Dried yolk of eggs ? The danger of ordinary

hard-boiled egg has been recognised by many for a very long time. — K. P.


$ Dr. Creswell has opened a subject far too great and important to be accepted or

rejected on the bare words “ total abolition of egg,” and it is to be hoped that the author

will give us much more information on the subject.—J. I,- B.



