30 



caught out, but must be encouraged to 7wp quietly from one cage to 

 the other. 



I hope I am not wearying my readers in dwelling so long on a 

 somewhat unwelcome subject, but I feel very strongly in the matter. 

 It must be evident to anyone who reads, even cursorily, the answers 

 given to anxious enquirers in our many bird papers, that thousands 

 of birds fondly regarded as "cherished pets" by their loving owners 

 suffer cruelly night after night through being abandoned, in 

 ignorance, to the attack of an ever increasing horde of tiny vampires^ 

 from which they have no possibility to escape. Such a bird, 

 chained down, as it were, within easy reach of his unseen enemies, 

 has no healthy rest whatever. As soon as lights are extinguished, 

 myriads of bloodsuckers issue from their hiding places, and sleep is 

 quite impossible. When the quondam sprightly, industrious songster 

 shows at last the effects of loss of blood, and of sleep, and spends 

 the day in trying to obtain the rest which he has been nightly 

 deprived of, the cause is ascribed to be anything but the true one. 

 Plenty of food and water has always been afforded him, and his cage 

 has been " cleaned out," say twice a week, but as this same cage is 

 mostly an expensive article of gilt wires, colored glass, and polished 

 framework, boiling water is, of course, never allowed to touch it r 

 and soap or soda is absolutely out of the question. If the idea of the 

 presence of red mite should by any possibility occur to the owner,, 

 the bird may perhaps be taken out and its body examined by day- 

 light, and the entire absence of any parasites at once assures its- 

 owner that the bird must be suffering from some complaint that may 

 be best relieved by a liberal dose of one or other of the advertised 

 panaceas, which are warranted to cure all the ills that bird-flesh is- 

 heir to. The poor bird is therefore put back into its gilded prison, 

 and doctored uselessly, while all that is necessary is that it should be 

 transferred to a new, or at least clean, cage that would bear the 

 application of boiling water occasionally, and that such a cage 

 should be hung in a fresh place for a month or so, until the other cage 

 has become free from all insects or their eggs. 



MICE 



must also be got rid of, not by poison, but either by traps or 



