THE TANAGERS. 3 



and should be selected according to the individual tastes of the birds. 

 The most successful is scraped bullock's heart or raw beef mixed with 

 chopped egg, bread-crumbs, German paste, and some ants' eggs." If 

 he gave this niess to his Tanagers, the only marvel is that they did 

 not expire in a day or two. This reminds me of a sentence in a letter 

 sent to me by a Spanish dealer at Buenos Ayres : " You cannot import 

 Tanagers, as they are very delicate, and have to be fed upon fresh raw 

 beef." To give minced uncooked bullock to a fruit-eating bird seems 

 to me as preposterous as to attempt to feed a lion on buns ; but many 

 fanciers give it to all their soft-billed fruit-eaters, in spite of the 

 laxative effect which it has upon them : yet these same men would 

 shudder at the bare notion of offering raw meat to a parrot or a fruit- 

 pigeon. 



Mr. J. Abrahams, writing to me in January, 1892, says: "They 

 are long-lived birds if kept on my ' Mixture,' mixed with bread and 

 damped, and cold potatoes, chopped up with my egg-yolk ; also ripe 

 fruit in season : but if given currants, or honey, or any similar messes, 

 they get chronic diarrhoea, and soon make their exit." 



Those amateurs, therefore, who are fortunate enough to acquire 

 Tanagers, will be able to choose between the two types of food recom- 

 mended above that used by Herr Wiener, which resulted in the death 

 of his birds, as he himself admits, after a few weeks : or that used by 

 Mr. Abrahams, which constitutes them long-lived birds, even though a 

 hothouse and tropical foliage are not provided to try to persuade them 

 that they are still free. 



Dr. Carl Russ gives the Tanagers a very bad character ; he thus 

 describes them : " Glittering, rich in colour and magnificent, they have 

 no true song, only low, harsh, unpleasant sounds ; not agreeable and 

 lovable, but mostly tempestuous, awkward, nervous, not easy to tame ; 

 in spite of several assertions to the contrary, not peaceable, with few 

 exceptions, characteristic of the delicate exclusively fruit-eating species 

 alone; some of them even very malicious towards those of their own 

 kind, or other companions ; therefore neither fit to be kept in an aviary 

 nor bird-room." 



By the fruit- eating Tanagers, Dr. Russ probably means the species 

 of Euphonia, (or Violet Tanagers) ; he having recorded the fact that, 

 when rearing its young, a Scarlet Tanager destroyed and devoured the 

 newly-hatched young of other birds. It is probably on account of this 

 cannibalistic tendency, which may perhaps have been abnormally 

 developed to supply the lack of sufficient variety of insect-food, that 

 raw meat is recommended as a food for these birds. I once had a 



