Correspondence. 311


CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.



ON MR. HUBERT ASTLEY AND SOME ASPECTS OF

AVICULTURE.


Sir, — A couple of years ago I was told upon the highest possible

authority that the Lories in the Zoological Gardens should be fed on a

different diet from that in use ; but since the information was accompanied

by the naive and candid admission that the birds appeared to be in perfect

health, the value of the friendly advice was diminished to vanishing point.

And although the opinion of the incorrectness of the Society's method was

the result of long experience with Lories, the adhesion to that method has-

been fully justified by the health and longevity of our birds.


Again, only last week a message was sent to me from one aviculturist

through another — both personal friends and men of repute whose names

wild horses shall not drag from me — to the effect that if a particular kind

of Starling was fed on the food he was having that morning, the span of his

life might be measured in days. If my kindly adviser had known that the

bird in question has looked neither sick nor sorry 011 those daily rations

since he came to the Gardens about a year ago and is apparently in

excellent condition at the present moment, his reported prophecy would

have been less positive and more hopeful. Now this bird belongs to a

species which, so far as I am aware, has never been imported before. Hence

my friend's opinion was not based upon practical experience, but was

inferentially drawn from bibliographical acquaintance with the species. I

am not now concerned with the justice of the inference ; I merely tell the

story — a sample of many I could recount — to illustrate the truth that it is

impossible to know without a wealth of experience exactly what conditions

will suit a given animal or bird in captivit}-.


That there is more than one way of feeding Hoopoes has been shown

by the letters recently published in this magazine on the subject ; and in

confirmation of what Mr. Phillipps says about the necessity of warmth for

these birds, I may add, parenthetically, that a few years ago our efforts to

keep them in our Western Aviary failed. In the Insect House, on the

contrary, where the air is always moist and the temperature high, they have

lived all the } r ear round in good health.


These preliminary remarks on the limitations of avicultural know-

ledge and the wisdom of caution in criticism bring me to Mr. Astley's

paper entitled Fresh Air for Cage Birds in the last issue of our magazine.

The writer indulges in one or two gibes, which are perhaps intended to be

funny and not unfriendly, but are wholly inexcusable withal, against the

Zoological Society for exhibiting Sugar Birds in cages with glass fronts and

backs and perforated zinc sides. I say inexcusable because these birds and

others, despite adverse preconceptions, did on the whole very well wheiLSQ-

caged ; and to crown it all made an uncommonly pretty show, a point which



