204



Correspondence, Notes, etc.



oreign birds in outdoor aviaries, many of which, as our members know, I

have succeeded in breeding here. But learning that it was the intention of

the sub-committee, to whom the matter was delegated, to visit several

towns where there were Corporation aviaries, seeking information on the

subject, I felt that there was no need for any advice or help I might render,

and therefore did not proffer it.


From time to time there were announcements in the local press of the

progress matters were making, and being busy at the time, it was some weeks

after the opening ceremony before I was able to visit Hesketh Park.


Imagine my surprise when I did so, on discovering that the site

chosen was one facing almost due North, in fact, if the committee and

their advisers had diligently sought for a position where they could erect a

house and enclosure suitable for a Polar Bear that some townsman had

presented to the Corporation, instead of a house for some of the most sun-

loving creatures in creation, they could not have hit upon a more suitable

place for the purpose in the whole thirty acres of the Park.


The matter has been the subject of much adverse comment, and very,

I may say, vigorous censure, by bird lovers of the town in the correspondence

columns of the local press, and which unfortunately I have been much too

busy to take any part in ; and owing to the energetic action of the Honorary

local Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Birds, Mr. Walker,

many of the more delicate foreigners, I believe in deference to public

opinion thus aroused, were caught up, placed in cages and taken into oiie

of the greenhouses last winter.


What has been done this Winter I do not know, and have only had

time to go out there once in November to look at the birds, but from

several statements in the papers I gather that they have had few, if any,

deaths, and that many of the birds during the past summer have reared

young. But I have no official information, and am therefore pleased to

notice that the Corporation have become members of our Society ; and

through their Curator, Mr. Hathaway, I hope we shall be furnished with

some details in regard to the inmates of this unique aviary, and particulars

of its death rate, which will doubtless be of great interest to all of us.


If it is true that very few deaths have occurred and that many of the

birds have bred during the past summer, it is only another confirmation of

my oft-repeated remark in my contributions to this Magazine, that we none

of us yet know what foreign birds really can endure in the way of climatic

vicissitudes and ill usage resulting from ignorance. In justice to the

Corporation I must admit that when I saw the birds last, in November,

none of them, so far as a casual examination showed, seemed actually ill or

in extremis, but many of them were very fluffy, and sat moping on their

perches in a far from happj' condition.


One of our esteemed members, Mr. Rothera, County Coroner for



