Avicultural Magazine been misinterpreted ? 341


“ help and encouragement of the members in their hobby of bird-

“ keeping.” [It was evidently at that time not the intention of the

Club to study birds in freedom !] “ And the Club does all in its


“ power to encourage shows. Having therefore different views and

“ purposes, the Club has no desire or intention of competing with the

“ Avicultural Society, or of draiving members from it. By all means

“ let everyone belong to both the Club and the Avicultural Society,


“ if they will. But while I feel obliged to insist upon the unscientific

“ character of the Club, do not let us submit to the imputation of

“ being wrascientific. Nothing unscientific, in the sense of being

“ inaccurate, or contrary to science, will be knowingly admitted into

“the pages of “Foreign Bird Notes.”


After all, that is all that our magazine has striven for, and

against.


Why, if by 1901 Mr. Fillmer asserted that the Society “ now

claims to be a scientific society,” did he write in the “Avicultural

Magazine” in 1900 as follows?—“lam very pleased to see the

“ increase in the size of the ‘Avicultural Magazine,’ and hope it will

“ be maintained. The magazine has been, and is, a great success,

“ and I want it to become a still greater one.” He then goes on to

suggest that the cult of canaries, foreign mammals, reptiles and

fishes should be included in its pages. Mr. Reginald Phillipps, in

answer to this suggestion, finished a letter thus—“ If once the flood¬

gates were opened ( i.e. mammals, reptiles, canaries, and so on),

“ it would be difficult to withstand the inrush of the flood, and the

“ consequent swamping of the British and foreign birds. When the

“ ‘Avicultural Magazine’ was established in 1894, it helped to supply

“ the want; and more and more it has done this, and more and more

“ it will continue to do this—if we are true to ourselves:”


I maintain we have been, and are.


The year of 1900 to 1901 shows no difference in the style of

the magazine, but contains just as many practical and simply-

written articles on British and foreign birds as when Mr. FillmQr

wrote to say it was so successful. If there have been a very few

members who when at home are museum ornithologists by prefer¬

ence, all the better for the society, since they tend to keep the

magazine from becoming unscientific according to Mr. Fillmer’s



