The Zoologist — October, 1871. 2773 



gflta Bi i^to SmIis. 



A Natural History of Cage Birds. By J. G. Keulemans. In 

 Monthly Parts, each containing six coloured Plates, drawn 

 and lithographed by the Author. To be completed in twenty 

 Parts. Price five shillings each. London : Van Voorst. 1871. 



Mr. Keulemans has selected the best of all subjects for a bird- 

 book. Everybody keeps Cage Birds : everybody meets with 

 casualties and difficulties, and everybody wants to know how to 

 obviate or overcome them. And here I might dilate on the 

 labours of Bechstein, his disciples and imitators, and might point 

 out what is left for Mr. Keulemans to do atid what he has to undo ; 

 but I prefer confining my attention, and that of my readers, to 

 what he has done and what he is going to do. 



The pleasure, the rational pleasure, of watching birds when at 

 liberty, and when they are following their own devices, cannot be 

 gainsaid ; and the use of a glass greatly enhances this pleasure, 

 because it brings the objects closer, and enables us to examine 

 them more carefully and more minutely ; but there is this dis- 

 advantage of a glass — the object under inspection may remove 

 itself out of the field of view just as you are intent on the develop- 

 ment of some interesting character, or the exhibition of some 

 peculiar instinct: in vain you sweep the horizon with your 

 Dollond; the performance that so greatly interested you is pro- 

 bably in course of being concluded and completed in an adjoining 

 county. Now the cage entirely removes this difficulty; it keeps 

 the object within range of your unassisted optics; and it is the 

 duty of an author on Cage Birds to teach us how to accomplish 

 this in the best possible manner, and with the least possible 

 trouble ; for the more time you take up with your pets, or the 

 more they interfere in any way with other occupations, imperative 

 occupations, the more likely are you to get tired of them, and in 

 the end give them up in favour of a new and less troublesome 

 hobby-horse. 



I acknowledge to having a weakness for Cage Birds, although 

 not of those species generally most esteemed. I possess no parrot 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. VI. 3 A 



