PREFACE. 



E object of the present book is to supply a 

 want long left by British students of foreign 



II birds in captivity. Whereas our German 

 friends have the excellent volumes written 

 iby the late Dr. Karl Russ, we have hitherto 

 .had to be content with a few sketchy hand- 

 books in this country. Therefore, when the Editor of 

 The Feathered World and Canary and Cage-Bird Life 

 informed me that the first part of my less ambitious 

 work* was almost out of print, and asked me to pre- 

 pare, as soon as possible, a more up-to-date edition, 

 I suggested that we might as well do the thing 

 properly, and write a book which should be practi- 

 cally complete. This suggestion, I rejoice to say, was 

 heartily approved of. 



Dr. Ru?s, who published the great German work, 

 *'The Foreign Chamber-birds" (Die Fremdlandiechen 

 Stubenvogel), was the Editor of the German "Feathered 

 World " ; therefore it is most fitting that the sister 

 work in England should be published by the Editor 

 of the English paper with the same title. 



Aviculture, or the study of birds in captivity, prob- 

 ably had its origin in prehistoric times, for we find 

 that all the more enlightened races of mankind (often 

 wrongly called savages) capture and keep their native 

 birds as pets. The Chinese are probably the most 

 ancient existing nation of bird-lovers, and it is quite 

 likely that they were aviculturists a great many cen- 

 turies ago. Henry Oldys, in an able paper upon the 

 " Cage-bird Traffic of the United States," eays : "The 

 practice of keeping live birds in confinement is world- 

 wide, and extends so far back in history that the time 

 -of its origin is unknown. It exists among the natives 

 of tropical as well as temperate countries, was found 

 in vogue on the islands of the Pacific when they were 

 first discovered, and was habitual with the Peruvians 

 under the Incas and the Aztecs under Montezuma. 

 Caged birds were popular in classic Greece and Rome. 

 The Alexandrian Parrakeet a ring-necked Parrakeet 

 of India which is much fancied at the present day, is 

 said to have been first brought to Europe by one of 

 the generals of Alexander the Great. Before this 

 living birds had been kept by the nations of Western 



* The articles under the title of "Foreign Bird-keeping" were 

 published in March, 1893, and issued in book form in 1399 and 1900. 

 ED. 



Asia, and the voices of Bulbuls and other attractive 

 singers doubtless added to the charms of the hanging 

 gardens of Babylon, while in China and Japan the art 

 of domesticating wild birds has been practised for many 

 centuries." It is tolerably certain that the ancient 

 Hebrews were aviculturists, for " a cage of unclean 

 birds" is mentioned in their writings, and we are well 

 aware that Peacocks were brought over regularly to 

 embellish Solomon's gardens. 



In order to be able to treat birds correctly in cap- 

 tivity, it is necessary that one should be familiarised 

 with the wild life, and therefore I have followed the 

 excellent example set by Dr. Russ, and have done my 

 best to get together field notes upon the majority of 

 the species. In order to do this, I was obliged to add 

 considerably to my already fairly comprehensive 

 library, and when a work upon birds runs into many 

 volumes at one or two guineas a volume, it will be 

 understood that my work is to a great extent a labour 

 of love. 



One objection raised to my smaller work, "Foreign 

 Bird-keeping," was that I did not give sufficient 

 information respecting the feeding of birds. I thought 

 I had done so myself, but, at any rate, I do not think 

 the same fault can, be found with the present work. 

 Nevertheless, do what one will, one can never expect 

 to escape scatheless from those reviewers who consider 

 it their chief duty to discover the blemishes and pass 

 over the good points in the book under their notice. 

 There is one gocd thing, and that is that even an un- 

 generous critique brings a work into notice, and the 

 public judges it on its own merits. 



I have purposely omitted a few birds which are not 

 in the least likely to come to hand nowadays. They 

 are either strictly preserved, are becoming extinct, or 

 are hardly ever to be met with in the hands of native 

 dealers, and their standing as cage-birds rests upon 

 a single chance specimen captured and brought home 

 by some traveller. I do not consider it my duty to 

 follow the example of the late Dr. Russ and include 

 accounts of dozens of birds, on the chance that they 

 may be eventually imported ; nor do I agree with him 

 that a bird is unworthy of notice because it is of 

 sombre colours and has no song ; it may nevertheless 

 be a most interesting species to breed, one perhaps of 



