Correspo?ide?ice, Notes, etc.



273



cotton wool; feathers, moss, etc. being left untouched on the aviary floor.

Both birds are very attentive sitters, the cock bird lioppiug into the nest

directly his wife comes out for an airing and food.


Last summer from the same pair of birds I had two nests, seven

young in the first about June, and two in the second nest in Septemberi,• all

were reared and grew up strong vigorous birds.


I attribute my success to the aviary being situated in a sunny south

aspect, and to keeping just a single pair of birds in a compartment quite to

themselves.


It is, of ( arse, not possible in this way to keep so many kinds of

birds, and to possess a varied collection of gay-plumaged occupants is very

pretty to look at, though often proving disappointing and disheartening,

especially so as the breeding season comes round when tragedies will occur

in the best of model mixed collections.


When I first started an aviary I had six pairs of apparently harmless

birds in the space where I now only keep one pair. Before the year was

out however half had been killed off or maimed in some way, nests that had

looked so promising and hopeful were destroyed, eggs purloined and

hardly a single youngster reared. By the present system I now not only pay

for all seed and food used but have substantial balance in hand at the end

of the season from the sale of young birds. Frank; Bathe;.



AVICULTURE AND SCIENCE.


Sir, —I am of course well aware that the fact of fresh air being of

more importance to birds than warmth was not an original discovery of Dr.

Creswell’s. He has never claimed that it was, nor has any one claimed it

for him, that I know of. What I stated was, that he had arrived at certain

conclusions, one of them being “ that fresh air and aseptic conditions are

of more importance to birds than heat.” He was not the discoverer of this,

but he was the first writer to give scientific reasons for the fact which pre¬

vious observers had noticed but could not explain.


The egg question is a large one, and I can hardly expect yon to

afford me space to go into the evidence. But the little fact that all Mr.

Townsend’s prize-winners are total abstainers from egg is worthy of note.


I do not know who Dr. Butler refers to under the pronoun “ we,” but

if he wishes to imply that his old associates in the foundation of the

Avicultural Society were in the habit of feeding their insectivorous birds,

(as he says he fed his), on a combination of oatmeal and pea-meal and other

abominations, I respectfully plead not guilty', on behalf of myself and our

quondam associates. No doubt a mixture such as Century' Food, containing

yolk of egg, would be superior to such rubbish; (But in those days we

never took Dr. Butler seriously on questions of food—if I recollect rightly

he used, among other eccentricities, to recommend bread crumbs for Night-



