SEEDS AND FOODS, RECIPES, DISEASES, MEDICINES. 279 



The outward sign of a healthy bird is, that he looks bright, and that not a feather 

 is out of place, rumpled, or dirty. If the bird be "out of sorts," my advice is, 

 to ferret out the probable cause, remove it if possible, and let nature, proper food, 

 pure water, fresh air, and clean sand, do the rest. When a disease is first noticed, 

 a few drops of castor-oil should be administered at once : this always proves an 

 excellent, harmless remedy ; as it cleanses the system, and fits the bird to receive 

 proper foods. Parrots, or larger birds, which resent handling, may be given castor- 

 oil by pouring just sufficient over the drinking-water to cover the surface, which 

 will oblige them to take it with the water. 



Egg-binding is the cause of many deaths in the aviary, but is easily overcome 

 by the introduction, with a camel's-hair brush, of a drop of sweet-oil into the egg- 

 passage. 



Birds, when freshly imported in large numbers, frequently pull each other's 

 feathers out, and, when large numbers are crammed together, become dirty, weak, 

 or sickly. With proper care, a clean cage, good food, fresh water, and pure air, 

 they recover in a very short time ; but they should never be put into an aviary or 

 cage with other birds before they are fully recovered, and able to take care of them- 

 selves. If feathers are broken, and the moulting-season be far off, one or two 

 feathers may be carefully pulled out every other day, when nature will replace them 

 at once. But, the process being painful to the bird, the operation ought never to be 

 performed except by very experienced hands. 



Parasites or insects are as often due to weak health as to uncleanliness. A 

 healthy bird, with sufficient opportunities to bathe, or dust itself in the sand, will keep 

 itself quite free from vermin. As in the case of tonics and patent medicines, the 

 ways of using the different kinds of insect-powder are numberless : pretty little air 

 guns and bellows are filled with the powder, and the many attractive forms of 

 putting it up make it far more salable than it is useful. The best powder to use is 

 the German insect-powder ; and the best method of using it is the old-fashioned 

 way of catching the bird in one hand, and thoroughly dusting every portion of the 

 body under the feathers with the other. The cage should be thoroughly cleansed, 

 the top being unscrewed for this purpose : these precautions will stop the plague 

 if care be taken at the same time to improve the bird's health by suitable and gen- 

 erous diet. 



The soft-billed birds are a class distinguished from the hard billed by their 

 inability to crack hard seeds ; and although some of the hard-billed varieties are 

 capable of living and thriving on the food given the soft-billed birds, and some of 

 the soft billed are able to crack and live on the softer kinds of seed, they are 

 notably separate classes. The two classes are distinguished from one another by 

 the length and formation of the beak. The hard-billed class usually have short 

 conical beaks , and the soft-bill class have, as a rule, long, slender beaks. 



In captivity the methods of feeding, and mixtures compounded as foods for the 

 soft-billed class, are very different : at the present time the chief food given this 

 class of birds is called Mocking-bird food ; and it has so far proved so much 

 superior to any mixture which has been compounded, that, whenever it can be pro- 

 cured, it is universally used as the basis of feeding soft-billed birds. 



There are two kinds of this food, the moist and the dry. The moist food may 



