FOOD FOR CHAFFINCHES. 
one part canary-seed is wholesome diet for a chaffinch. 
A little bruised rice is good occasionall} 7- , as it prevents loose- 
ness of the bowels. In summer, let him have a moderate 
supply of green food, and in winter a piece of sweet apple. 
Mealworms and ants’ eggs are particularly relished by the 
chaffinch. Should your bird get too fat, and consequently 
lazy, put dry ants’ eggs in his water, and feed him partly on 
Swedish turnip till his corpulency is reduced. 
Meyer, the naturalist, gives the following hint how to treat a 
bird who refuses his food. “ Let it be placed in a cage in 
the room where it is purposed to be kept. Give it freely 
appropriate food and drink in open vessels ; leave it thus undis- 
turbed for several hours, then dipit in fresh water, and again place 
it in its cage. It will sit for some minutes thoroughly exhausted, 
but will soon recover, and begin preening itself, and in the 
course of a few minutes become extremely animated, and then 
it will certainly eat the food placed before it. Doubtless the 
bathing produces an appetite in birds as in man.” 
As I have before observed, avoid as much as possible arti- 
ficial food ; still, as I am aware that the various compositions 
known as “ German ” pastes are much patronised by bird- 
keepers, I append a few recipes for making “ universal food ” 
for all the smaller birds — chaffinches among the number. 
1. Take a Swedish turnip (which can be kept through the 
whole year by burying it in sand in a cool place), grate it fine, 
immerse the crumb of best white bread in water, squeeze it dry, 
add a handful of barley meal, and mash all together with a pestle 
and mortar. This is a genuine German paste, and one that is 
strongly recommended by the most famous of German bird- 
breeders. 
2. Take the crumb of stale white bread, soak it for half an 
hour in water, squeeze out the moisture, add to the bread its 
weight in wheat meal, moisten with milk, and beat well 
together. 
3. Crust of white bread, two ounces ; carrot, one ounce ; 
flour, five teaspoonfuls. Pound the whole into a paste with 
water. 
4. Oatmeal, twenty -five parts; sweet almonds, six parts; rape- 
oil, two parts; sugar, one part; carraway-seeds, one part. To 
be put altogether in a sieve, and rubbed through. 
The Diseases of Chaffinches and how to Cure them. — 
Dysentery is a disease to which chaffinches are very liable, 
especially when they are first caught, and before they get 
