94 Song Birds. 



where to look for the food and water. Having once 

 given the new-comers time to get perfectly at home 

 with the room and their owner, and used to the faces 

 and voices of those going in and out, the actual 

 putting into the aviary is generally a very quiet work ; 

 when in a single cage, too, they have wanted so 

 much to be promoted to it ! 



2. In my experience of birds (speaking, of course, 

 only of my own) I do not think that I have ever known 

 one bird kill another. But there are a few kinds 

 always excluded from the company, and at the building 

 season I separate again those that are the larger, 

 Bullfinches, Java Sparrows, &c., from the remainder. 

 Bullfinches, however, are sometimes known to pair 

 with Canaries ; chiefly in cases where they have been 

 brought up together. 



3. To continue the subject of birds that agree in 

 aviaries, I must first remind my readers that three 

 nests in one shrub, and those of different sorts, are 

 by no means uncommon ; at least I have found them 

 many a time thus placed : a very wide division does 

 not then seem necessary. Still, of course, the wider 

 the quarters are the more the cage resembles the open 

 air with the numerous flocks of all sorts of wild 

 birds we often see in places where they are cared for. 



4. At this moment I have before me, living (for a 

 time) in one large store cage, about three feet six 

 long, by eighteen inches deep, a party of not less 



