The Size of Aviaries and Cages.



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whole number, not one egg hatched and not one young bird flew

except two English Goldfinches.


However, I had learnt a lesson : in the first place the cats

paid very dearly for their night’s work, and secondly, I caught

up and disposed of almost all the Doves. Curiously enough I

never found a feather of the young Yellow-rumps though I made

a microscopic search for them. I think they must have flown

against the wire netting and been dragged through.


I ought now to have caught and caged the Yellow-rumps

as they were quite dispirited, and in poor condition for nesting

again, but I foolishly left them, the consequence being that they

built another nest in an aucuba, at the end of August, again

laying four eggs and, when I returned home on October 6th, I

found the poor little hen sitting dead and mummified on three

dead young and one egg.


I trust that others will succeed where I have failed. I am

sending the two eggs by request to the Natural History Museum,

where Dr. Bowdler Sharpe writes me they will “ come in useful

for the 5th volume of the Catalogue of eggs.”



THE SIZE OF AVIARIES AND CAGES.


By Aug. F. Wiener, F.Z.S.


I have observed that those interested in Cage Birds have

of late years put up large flight aviaries, or kept collections of

their feathered friends more frequently in bird-rooms than in

separate large or small cages.


Before me lies the description of the new Bird-house just

built in the Zoological Park of New York, which is divided into

a number of huge aviaries. In the London Zoological Gardens

there were erected, two years ago, the large Parrots aviary on

the canal bank, and this year the Gulls’ aviary and the Wading-

birds’ aviary. A number of private aviaries have been described

in the Avicultural Magazine.


Everyone who incurs the expense and trouble of keeping

birds wishes to see his feathered friends as well housed and made

as happy as they can be.


As a matter of sentiment nearly every bird keeper would



