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PART II. 



ON LIVING OR D03IESTICATED BIRDS, SUITABLE FOR 

 AVIARIES OR PRESERVES. 



In determining the plan most advisable to be pur- 

 sued in this division of our volume, much difficulty has 

 been experienced. Our first idea was to have drawn up 

 as complete a catalogue as possible of all such foreign 

 birds as were to be met with in our public or private 

 menageries, distinguishing such as were known to have 

 bred in confinement, and had consequently become do- 

 mesticated, from such as were merely acclimated, or 

 accustomed to our chmate. This, without doubt, would 

 have been the most desirable plan of proceeding, and 

 would have given that information to the lovers of 

 aviaries, which is now so much wanted ; but further in- 

 quiry showed us the utter impossibility of doing this, 

 from the total absence of the necessary materials. It has 

 not been heretofore the custom of recording, in print, 

 information of this nature. Those persons whose trade 

 lies in the buying and selling of living birds, and of which 

 there are several in London, are not persons capable of 

 writing upon such matters, even had they the inclination 

 to reveal what they no doubt consider the secrets of 

 their craft. The Zoological Society, on the other hand, 

 by embracing within its objects the whole animal king- 

 dom, has hitherto found itself so occupied, and its atten- 

 tions so distracted by the multiphcity of its concerns, 

 and the paucity of its working members, that nothing 

 worth mentioning has been communicated to the public 

 on this interesting subject. However desirable, there- 

 fore, such an exposition as we at first contemplated 

 would be, it never can be carried into execution, unless 

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