324 
Some Pjxperiences of Codcatoos. 
I had destr-oyed, and he proved to l)e as badly infected witli 
tuberculosis as a bird could be. 'After the death of Teddy and 
the loss of Toby and her companion, I felt that nothing could 
hurt me much, yet this last catastrophe had a kind of com- 
pleteness al)out it which could not fail to cause a final pang. 
Sadly, therefore, I ordered the two sick birds to be caged 
and placed in a warm room— it seemed a pity to kill them 
when they were so valuable, though I doubted whether it 
would not be the most prudent and merciful thing to do— and 
then I went out into the garden to meditate on the atrocious - 
ness of aviculture as a hobby. A whistle in an oak tree 
al?ove my head made me look up to see an Adelaide Parrakeet 
holding a brown object in her foot, which she was breaking 
to pieces industriously. Presently she dropped it, and picking 
it up I found it to be an oak-apple with one side bitten away 
and the grub neatly extracted from the centre. " Well," I 
thought to myself, " I tried Teddy with almost every imagin- 
able kind of food, but I Certainly did not offer him oak-apples, 
so here goes." Accordingly I collected a few and took them 
into the birdroom. Timmie was in a very bad way, her ap- 
petite was small and capricious, and she was running at the 
sides of the beak just like the bird who had died. At first 
she would take no interest in the unfamiliar object I offered 
her, but after a good deal of coaxing I persuaded her to taste 
one of the little white grubs. She swallowed it and finding it 
better than she exj^ected took a second. Decidedly they were 
good and in a very short time she was calling so eagerly 
for fresh supplies that she attracted the attention of her com- 
panion in the next cage and I had little difficulty in inducing 
her also to accept the new dainty. From that time on oak- 
apples formed an important item in the daily menu, and the 
Cockatoos quickly learned to bite them open and extract the 
tiny grubs with the tips of their tongues in so skilful a manner 
that it wac- difficult to believe that they were not indulging in 
their natural diet. Banksians are, of course, largely insect- 
ivorous in a wild state, but the wood -boring larvae they find 
in their own home are said to be of very large size indeed. 
For a few days the sick birds' condition remained unaltered. 
Then a change for the worse manifested itself in Timmie, 
she refused all food but grubs, and even these had to be ex- 
