PURPLE-CAPPED LORY. 49 



able to break down his work, and scatter Ms conclusions to the 

 winds. 



All birds, and the Purple-cap is one of these, that feed more on 

 soft than on hard food, require daily attention to keep their cages or 

 other dwelling-places sweet and clean. Thus a large bird-room inhabited 

 by, say one hundred, seed-eating birds, may, quite safely, be left for 

 twelve months without being cleaned out, and no ill effects either to 

 the birds, or to the human inhabitants of the house need be appre- 

 hended; but if even half a dozen soft-billed birds are included with 

 them in the apartment, the case will be very different, and great care 

 must be exercised, or very objectionable results will speedily follow: 

 such a room, containing even the limited number of six soft-billed, 

 or soft-food-eating birds will require to be thoroughly cleaned out and 

 everything in it renewed at least four times a year, so that on the 

 whole it is much better not to keep hard and soft-billed birds together 

 in the same aviary. 



Similarly the cage of a seed-eating bird may be cleaned out once 

 a week only, but that of a soft-food-eating bird, such as a Purple- 

 capped Lory, must be attended to every day, or the health of the 

 bird will suffer, and the room in which the cage is place be rendered 

 almost uninhabitable by reason of the effluvium arising therefrom. 



Although the Purple-cap does not, as a natural consequence of the 

 diet upon which it subsists, eat, or rather swallow, as much grit and 

 sand as a seed-eating bird, it cannot be preserved in health without 

 some small gravel for use in its gizzard, as the muscular stomach of 

 birds is popularly termed; therefore the owner will do well to place a 

 plentiful supply of coarse river, or well-washed sea, sand at the bottom 

 of his pet Lory's cage, which he must make up his mind to clean, 

 or have cleaned, out every day, not even excepting Sunday, and this, 

 being a work of necessity, need cause no scruple to the most consci- 

 entious of bird-keepers, or aviarists, to use the latest word coined to 

 express a fancier of feathered pets. 



As a further incentive to exertion in this respect, a clean cage means 

 a clean, healthy, comfortable, happy-looking bird, while a dirty cage 

 necessitates a miserable, bedraggled, moping creature, that spends half 

 its time with its head under its wing, endeavouring by such means to 

 shut out the evil odours arising from the floor of its domicile, from 

 its sensitive olfactory nerves. 



Again, a dirty cage is always more or less infested with vermin, 

 and a bird tormented by these wretched parasites soon becomes diseased, 

 often plucks itself bare of feathers in its desperate attempts to free 

 itself from its tiny myriad tormentors, and, from continual disturbed 



