On the priceless value of the Live Bird.



29



soaked in milk, and also on grass roots. Little bits of Berheris

dulcis were also very much appreciated, and the birds always loudly

clamoured for some branchlets as soon as I approached the aviary.


And thus my little green friends from Puerto Varas and

Osorno have well rewarded me for all the trouble they gave me dur¬

ing the long and arduous journey across South America, and have

contradicted and disproved the reputation they have with the natives

of their own country of not living in confinement longer than a year.

The reason of their not living there for long is probably that after

a while the owners, like the child of the milliner in Osorno, “ don’t

care for them any longer,” and then the end is near !


Gooilust, August. 1913.



THE PRICELESS VALUE OF THE

LIVE BIRD.


By Reginald Phillipps.


A few summers ago, the gardeners, especially perhaps the

rose-growers, complained of the prevalence of blight.


One lovely afternoon found me in a large garden in the

suburbs, where flowers abounded ; and round and about the lawn

there were masses of roses in faultless bloom, none showing a trace

of injury or harm—-yet the neighbours were complaining of the

green fly.


In addition to her flowers, our hostess had a weakness for

birds, which were regularly and bountifully fed ; and the garden was

alive with birds, not a few of them being as tame as chickens.


As I lounged in an easy chair on the lawn, some two or three

feet from my lazily extended extremities I noticed a male House

Sparrow closely shadowed by a fledgeling. Ignoring the humans and

their chatterings, father Sparrow was searching a rose-bush, inch by

inch, picking off aphides, and passing them on to his young hopeful.

Here, then, was the secret of the beautiful roses and flowers :—the

plague was being kept under by the Live Birds.


Not far away there lived another relative, the happy possessor

of larger grounds, to whom we eventually repaired; and I was taken



