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Mr. Aug. F. Wiener,



selves to the local conditions and climate. Whether the old birds,

who have endured one winter better than could be anticipated,

will survive another winter without much more protection is an

open question.


For those who take some minute interest in the various

species, such aviaries afford little or no chance of gathering

information or knowledge, owing to the distance of the birds and

the consequent difficulty of identification.


Breeding and rearing a brood in such an aviary is

hopeless. The few birds that were bred were either eaten by

rats as soon as they left the nest or destroyed by Cockatoos who

developed a carnivorous appetite. If half the cubic space of that

aviary had been divided into twenty partitions, hundreds of

young Parrots might have been bred and reared successfully in

fuller view of the public and of students.


The Gulls’ aviary is superb in design and looks well

adapted to its purpose. It attracts wild Gulls who appear very

desirous to join their relations in captivity and to share their

good food, if they could only find ways and means to constitute

themselves prisoners or pensioners of the Zoological Society.

Some little additional shelter for exceptionally rough weather

would possibly be advisable, when we think of a spell of very

cold weather accompanied by sleet or snow.


It is asserted that Gulls require no shelter. But the

Penguins, in the adjoining Seal Pond enclosure, can be seen

of an evening to creep into crevices of the Rockwork for pro¬

tection against severe weather, though Penguins are probably as

fit to withstand inclement weather as any Gulls.


The Waders and European wild birds’ aviary is indeed

beautiful and the ideal of the kind of aviary a gentleman might

like to have in his own grounds. That some of the many

song-birds it contains are very rarely seen, and that it would

require a week’s patient watching to see all the birds that

are enumerated on the little nameplates as inhabiting the

enclosure in summer, is in this case not a serious drawback, for

anybody really interested in British birds has seen most of these

in the fields or can see them if he cares to look for them.


The latest addition to the Bird-houses at the Zoo are the



