lis The Secret of Keeping Gonldian Finches. 
up at the east and west ends, and only open above and to 
the south. Abundance of natural green food was supplied 
and seed of the best, besides cuttlefish, mortar rubbish, water, 
rock salt and so forth. But the soil or rather subsoil is 
clay, and here I believe is one cause for the loss of my 
Gouldians. I had 2 pairs of Blacks and one pair of Reels; 
of these one pair of Blacks was acclimatised and had bred 
young previously. The other two pairs were, I believe, 
acclimatised and came from an exhibitor. I was new to the 
game in those days and treated my birds differently to what 
I should now. I recollect that the cock Red was the pick 
of the; lot, and then a pair of Blacks were also excellent, 
but the Red hen and the other pair of Blacks wei'e not quite 
up to the mark. I turned them straight into the aviary ; but, 
1 know now that only the hardiest birds can stand that sort 
of treatment: wliatever the time of the year you turn them out. 
I am convinced that the best thing to do is to cage your 
birds in the inner house for three, four, or more days, accord- 
ing to the time of the year and then leave the door open. 
Birds are strange creatures — intensely nervous for the most 
part, and the newness of their surroundings is quite enough 
to put them clean off their food. The nervous depression 
consequent on the journey and the privation of food all con- 
duce to a condition of a kind of paralytic fright. To illus- 
trate my point: I had a pair of St. Helena Waxbills, which 
were both confiding and fearless. One day the cock bird got 
his foot entangled in some grass. It could not have been 
there long because only just previously I had given him a 
mealworm. I i-escued him as quickly as possible, but even 
so, he lay in my hand utterly exhausted. I put him in a large 
cage with food and water in a nice warm corner of the inner 
flight and left him. In twenty minutes the little bird had 
recovered and flown out, as I had purposely left the cage 
door open. But, and here the sad part of the story comes 
in, the next morning he was dead, although before the acci- 
dent there was not a fitter bird in the aviary and it was 
August. I think that was the most instructive death I ever 
had. Fright or its first cousin, over and sudden joy are the 
cause of more deaths than we wot of ; I fear we are apt 
to forget our feathered little chums have nerves and if we 
could but see and feel their little hearts tick-tacking two- 
