ON ILLNESSES AND WOUNDS. 
47 
CHAPTER VIII. 
ON ILLNESSES AND WOUNDS. 
I PRESUME that it will be expected that I should give a few hints 
respecting' the illnesses and allied troubles of bird-life. I am not 
sure that there is much practical use in a chapter upon this subject, 
but perhaps there may be a little. 
As we all know, “ Prevention is better than cure,” and given 
healthy birds to start with, also barring accidents, we know that 
the life of feathered captives may be prolonged to far beyond the 
natural limit arrived at by the feathered savage. 
If birds ai-e healthy, and kept clean, take plenty of exercise, are 
not too much coddled, are correctly fed, and have fresh air, there 
is no obvious reason why they should get ill. The only trouble is 
that they may themselves court disaster by self-indulgence, ambi- 
tion, or senseless rage. The passions which mankind exhibits are 
identical with those of other animals, and when not controlled by 
commonsense and regard for law and order, are equally destructive 
to all alike. 
Do you disbelieve in self-indulgent birds ? Watch that little 
Twite driving every other bird from the seed- pan until he has 
gorged himself to repletion with hemp seed; or that Redstart, who 
keeps his wife from the soft food until he has swallowed all the 
largest fragments of yolk of egg. Is not that self-indulgence? 
Greed is a common fault with all wild creatures, as it is one of the 
greatest and commonest sins of mankind, and its product is disease 
and death. 
Can a bird show ambition ? Certainly. I was once watching 
two cock canaries in one of my aviaries, one singing against the 
other; louder and louder they sang until the din became almost 
unbearable; suddenly, with a last half-choked shout, one of them 
dropped from its branch like a stone, killed in a second by its effort 
to outdo its brothei', throngh the bursting of a blood-vessel. As 
for senseless rage, nobody who has kept birds need be assured that 
this is of frequent occurrence among feathered bipeds. 
How can such things be avoided ? To a certain extent they 
can be, for the greedy bird may be often placed with companions 
whose food is plain and wholesome. Thus a Twite does not require 
hemp, and is better without it. If his companions are Grassfinches, 
a little German rape added to their mixture of canary seed and 
millet will not tempt him to lay on superfluous fat. It is also not 
necessary to associate two cock-birds of any species of loud-voiced 
and assertive songsters in the same aviary. Lastly, as I have 
already said in a former chapter, all spiteful birds should be caught 
