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Hangnest. The ridiculous error referred to was caused not exactly by a

fault of iny own, but by an accident. When I received the labels there was

nothing whatever enclosed to guide me as to which cage each belonged to,

excepting the price, and as each of the two birds in question had been

entered at the same selling price, I had to put the labels on the cages at

random. Perhaps the Secretary of the Crystal Palace Show will accept the

hint; and when, in future, an exhibitor makes more than one entry in a

class of equal prices, he will inform such exhibitor beforehand as to the

correct respective numbers.


I am Sony that just at the moment when Mr. Pliillipps was looking at

the SMma the bird was “ crouching in a corner of his cage.” At home he

is finger-tame, and if I had to part with all my birds except one, this

particular bird is the one I should elect to keep as a pet.


I can fully sympathize with Mr. Pliillipps in his reference to the

rarity, for the moment, of individual birds which suddenly become common,

and the pair of Red-sided Tits which occasioned his remarks are a good case

in point. In the late autumn of last year I received a letter from a

prominent dealer to the effect that he had a pair of very rare birds that he

should like me to see, his letter concluding with the remark, “When I tell

you that I have never before seen the variety, you will easily understand

that they are rarities.” I was, of course, at his establishment at the earliest

possible moment, and bought the birds for three pounds. The very next

day I was offered, and accepted, the choice of eighteen birds of the species

at one pound the “pair.” A week after they were advertized in the fancy

papers at twelve shillings and sixpence per pair! I am certain that the

original dealer acted quite bond fide, and he has since assured me that he

himself paid fifty shillings for the pair. Notwithstanding that I paid very

much more for my birds than their real value, I am very pleased to possess

them. They are charming little things, and perfectly tame. For some

time I kept the four together in a large cage furnished with virgin cork, but,

as they were so exceedingly fond of a bath that it was impossible to keep

clean drinking water in their cage, I turned them into the small birds’

aviar}'. Here they are in their element, and climb about with all the

acrobatic perfection of our British Tits, and hammer at a hemp-seed or

sunflower-seed in exactly the same manner. A mealworm will at once

bring them all to my hand.


To refer again to Mr. Pliillipps’ letter. The anomaly is therein

mentioned of Bearded Tits being entered in 1S94 in two separate classes, and

ignored in both, and in 1895 being awarded a prize in the A.O.V. British

Class. One of the reporters of a fancy paper, presumably inspired by the

judge, remarked of this class (the quotation is from memory, but correct

substantial^) “A Bearded Tit took second; a more brightlj^-coloured

specimen being passed as a foreigner.” The “ more brightly-coloured

specimen ” was my own, and, as it happens, I have the written guarantee of

the vendor that it is a bona fide British nestling. I exhibited the same bird

early last year, and he was similarly “passed.” After the judging I found

the bird under the bench, so I asked the judge if he had seen the bird, or if it

had been misplaced by accident. He told me that he had “ passed ” the

bird as being too good to be British, but that, if he had known it to be

really British, it would have been in the mone}". If one shows a Siskin,

Redpoll, Rinnet, or a representative of many other so-called “British”



