104



Mr. Aug. F. Wiener,



cages. As there are nineteen outdoor cages I presume this

means sixty-one indoor divisions.


In these are to be housed :


(1) All the Parrots. The Bulletin of the New York Zoo¬

logical Society, No. 18, July 1905, in which the new Bird-house

is described speaks of 500 different species of Parrots. I

thought the known species numbered nearer 1,000.


(2) Besides a very large number of Parrots, these 61 indoor

aviary-cages are to contain the following species as enumerated

verbatim in the same Bulletin on page 225 :


“Among the groups of birds which will soon find homes

“ in this beautiful building, may be mentioned the Thrushes,

“ Warblers, Titmice, Bulbuls, Orioles, Tanagers, Buntings,

“Grosbeaks, Waxbills, Sparrows, Starlings, Bower-birds,

“ Crows, Jays, Larks, Hornbills and Toucans, Woodpeckers,

“ Cuckoos, Kingfishers; Fruit-Pigeons and Doves ; the smaller

“Quail and Partridges, Sand-Grouse, Tinamous, the Sand-

“ pipers and Plovers, and many others.”


Further on a colon} 7 of a dozen Terns diving for fish in a

specially large cage are mentioned, also Skylarks, Mocking and

other specially North American song-birds are spoken of, and I

011I3 7 wonder that Albatross, Pelicans, Storks, Gulls, Owls and

Birds of Prey, Pheasants and Foreign Fowls are omitted.


Before copying that new American Bird-house in European

Zoological Gardens, it would be well to wait a couple of years

and to ascertain then how many of the crowd of birds housed in

the first year were alive a year later, and whether it has fulfilled

the hopes of its designers.


It is permissible to put a great number of stuffed speci¬

mens into a glass case in a Museum, but quite a different thing

to keep living creatures in good health in an aviary if stocked

by a great variety of species.


A large open-air aviary which will be known to nearly

every reader of the Avicultural Alagazine is the “ Canal Bank,”

or large Parrots’ Flight Aviary at the London Zoo. This huge

structure was planned before the gentleman on whom the

management of the London Zoological Gardens now devolves

had been appointed.



