255



CORRESPONDENCE



ORNITHOLOGY versus AVICULTURE.


Sir, —I have said all I have to say in support of my proposal to

extend the scope of the Magazine. The idea seems to have many enemies

and no friends but myself. If there are any in favour of it—let us hear

from them. If there are none, the subject had better drop.


I should be glad if Dr. Butler would have the kindness to point out

When and where I endeavoured to “persuade” anyone “ that aviculture and

the fancy are one and the same thing.” Until he has done this, I think

that the less he says about “ misrepresenting facts,” the better. I am in no

danger of imagining “ aviculturist ” and “fancier” to be Synonymous—

neither do I think, as some of us appear to do, that “fancier” and “fool *

are two names for the same thing.


In the first number of this Magazine, an aviculturist was defined as

“ a person interested in the keeping and breeding of birds.” I object to

any narrowing of the meaning of the term.


This correspondence has brought to light a tendency among a section

of the Council to confuse aviculture with ornithology, t© exalt the scientific

side of our pursuit at the expense of the practical, and to subordinate the

interests of the Society to the supposed wishes and prejudices of the few

members who are scientific ornithologists. This appears to me to be a

much more serious and important matter than the adoption or rejection or

liiv “ proposal,” and if this tendency grows and developes, there will soon

be no room in the Society for such an unscientific aviculturist as


Horatio R. Fieemer.



SPRAY MILLET.


I hasten to correct my answer to Mrs. Keith Maitland’s question in

the August Number. There is, I find, a very small Indian Millet, much finer

than the the common Spray or African Millet. Mr, J. Abrahams has sent

me a beautiful sample of it. It can, I presume, be obtained from him.


O. E. Cress weee.


GREY SINGING FINCHES.


Sir, — I have had Grey Singing-finches affected with the disease

■described by Miss Husband—also the European Serin-finch. It is, in my

experience, a disease almost peculiar to the genus Serinus, or at any rate

one to which they are more liable than other birds. Not being a doctor,

I can say nothing as to the cause or nature of the malady—but it did not

seem to be contagious. Horatio R. Fieemer.



TREATMENT GF RUSSIAN BULLFINCH.


Sir, —Will you kindly advise me how to treat my cock Bullfinch

(Russian); he has been suffering from diarrhoea for the last ten daj^s, with

loss of appetite, sitting moped and ruffled. I gave him two doses of castor

oil, with an interval of three days, and fed him on bread and milk, soaked

crushed rape seed and a few ants’ eggs. Now I have added a little crushed

hemp seed mixed with the rape, and some of Abraham’s egg, as he seemed

in want of more nourishment and was much better and more lively, but

still breaths rather quickly, and I observed yesterday had lost the feathers



