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pareil, the Bengalee, the Green Cardinal, and the Red-crested

Finch are among the tamest, home-reared Cut-throats are,

however, perhaps the most confiding of all foreign finches

which I have had.


Some Doves, but more especially the common Barbary

Dove, become a perfedt nuisance from their friendliness, settling

upon your head diredtly you enter the aviary where they are, and

returning as fast as you lift them off; but others never seem to

become really tame ; although, after the lapse of time, they

show less fear than at first.


The tiny,Chinese Ouails, which at first are very nervous,

and fly against the roof at the risk of broken necks when you

enter their domains, gradually learn to moderate their timidity

and merely trot out of your way ; also, when you are once out¬

side the wirework, they will run like chicken to eat any dainty—

such as a cockroach—which you throw in for them.


To be a pleasure to their owners, birds should be tame ;

half the charm of my lovely specimen of the Pileated Jay con¬

sists in the fact that he will take food from my fingers, and will

sing and dance to me. On the other hand, birds which never

get tame, like some of the Cardinals when in large aviaries, or

the Cowbirds and Troupials, are a constant source of irritation:

however beautiful a bird may be, if it rattles about in extreme

terror, and imagines you are going to murder it whenever you

approach its aviary, you feel that you can never make a friend of

it—and resolve, when you part with it or it dies, never to have

anotner of its species.


REVIEW.


Animals at Work and Play , by C. J. Cornish (Seeley &• Co ., LtdJ


Mr. Cornish’s books are always delightful, and this is no

exception to the rule. We cannot notice half the good things

about birds to be found in it, and would recommend our readers

to get the book themselves.


Mr. Cornish appears not to know the difference between

Budgerigars and Rove-birds, and seems half inclined to credit

the old fable that they die of grief after the loss of their mate.

And they are not “delicate birds,” as he says they are.


The chapter on “ The Soaring of Birds,” though it con¬

tains nothing new, is well worth reading. And the same may be

said of that on “ Birds Rost in Storms.”


“The writer was informed that some years ago, at a hawking part}"



