Correspondence.



295



I should he obliged if you would be so kind to have corrected. I have

compared the printed copy with the type-written one I sent in, and can

find no reason why the printer should have made the following alterations r


P. 193. 4th. line from bottom, for “application” read “ appelation.”


P. 195. iStli. line from top, for “Trincule” read “Trincnlo.”


P. 196. 9th. line from top, for “latest” read “later.”


P. 196. 12th. line from top, “Umbre” should not be in italics.


P. 196. Sth line from bottom, for “403” read “401”


P. 197. 11 tli. line from top, the word “latter” has been omitted


from before “ locality.”


P. 197. Bottom line, for “tarsus 10 to 12J,” read “tarsus 10 to io|.”


I would also venture to remark that on nearly every page I find my

punctuation has been altered, at any rate in one case altering the sense of

a paragraph.


I am very sorry to make any criticisms on such an excellent and

useful journal as the Avicultural Magazme but accuracy is essential to its

usefulness. S. S. Fi.owER.


Giza, Egypt, June 30 th, 190S.



CAGE BIRDS AND PANICS AT NIGHT.


Sir, — I am much interested in a reply from one of your correspondents

in the July Number of the Avicultural- Magazine to the query headed

“ Bullfinch losing feathers,” and would be glad to give my experience and

suggestions as to the cause of “Panic” which cage birds seem subject to

at night. I have three Canaries, one Bullfinch, one foreign finch and three

Linnets in a large aviary cage which I keep in the greenhouse during the

dai'and on a table in a spare room at night. On four different occasions

I have found on uncovering the cage in the morning that one of the

Linnets was seriously mutilated, the flight feathers literally cut clean off

leaving only the stumps, and the end of the wings grazed and bleeding. I

naturally thought this was due to mice, as these have often been a trouble

in other ways. I then had the cage suspended from the middle of the

ceiling in another room. The same thing occurred again, and I was in

despair. Then I left the door open to enable me to hear them and keep

watch. Between three and four o’clock in the morning the fluttering began

again. I quickly turned on the electric light and quieted the birds by

calling them by name. All were silent at once, and I then felt sure that

“mice” were not the culprits. On mentioning this to a friend who is a

lover of birds and really understands them, he tells me these sudden panics-

are sometimes due to “Moonlight,” and also to their hearing the call-note

of a migrant bird during the early hours of the morning, and in their

anxiety to fly with them, their poor wings are cut and bruised against the

bars of the cage. This occurs especially in Spring and Autumn and I find

it is so. I see in Mr. Farmborough’s article in the July number on



