Correspondence, Notes, etc. 247


somewhat different. We all know that life in America, and especially in

New York, is mueli more strenuous than it is in Europe. The American

public want to see as much as possible in a short time, either owing to

lack of time or to the habit of doing most things more quickly and on a

bigger scale. We in Europe are habitually less in a hurry, and more in¬

terested in details than in the admiration of huge numbers.


I think that very many more people in Europe have kept some birds

themselves, at some time in their life, than is the custom in America.


The public here in London is coming to the Zoological Gardens not

once but again and again, very many come many times every summer,

some once a month or every fortnight or week, with no other attraction

and purpose than to look at the animals, and visitors of this sort want to

see their favourites individually 7 , and take a personal interest in those

they prefer.


People who have kept or are keeping birds constitute a considerable

proportion of the visitors, and they wish to see the animals they best know

and are eager to learn something new about their rational treatment.


Cage-birds have always been, and always will be, favourite pets of

many 7 European households. It is a well known fact that foreign finches

become much more easily used to cage life than indigenous finches, but

owing to ignorance of suitable feeding or defective housing few private

persons succeed in keeping these pretty creatures as successfully as they

might be kept. It seems to me that the province of a Zoological Garden is

to disseminate and popularise practical knowledge as to how to keep birds,

and to interest the public in the means of doing so.


Not one in a thousand people who visit a Zoological Garden can

afford a garden aviary, but hundreds have tried or would try to keep a pair

of birds to brighten their homes. For this purpose the foreign finches, and

especially 7 the smaller waxbills, are more suited than any other birds ; and

it is just these that have been unaccountably neglected in the London Zoo.

in the past. They 7 are easy to keep when housed in suitably constructed

cages and tended with intelligent and thoughtful care. But such cages are

not easily obtained because for want of a model they are not made whole¬

sale, though they might easily be made cheaply enough.


Scarcely is the plan mooted to build at last a new house for small

foreign birds, when claims are put forward that the small birds should be

housed in large flight aviaries in a state similar to “ natural conditions.” I

assert that they are not natural conditions when we confine a number

of birds of many kinds in one enclosure, make them hop about, live

and sleep 011 the same little tree, and eat out of the same food dish. Birds

do not do that in nature and they cannot and do not thrive under such

conditions. The weaker ones soon end a miserable worried existence.


Few persons who have not studied them closely have any idea of the

great beauty and wonderful gracefulness of the small waxbills, some of



