Correspondence



291



in the scientific side of our hobby, do not want to make our Journal largely

unintelligible or of lessened interest to the ordinary bird keeper. I suggest,

too, that many ornithologists like entomologists can hardly throw stones at

ordinary bird keepers, when we consider the vast number of specimens

sacrificed and clutches of eggs seized to form a series, etc. I dissent from

your lady correspondent on different grounds. Her letter, I am afraid, will

do just what she accuses us of doing, since her whole attitude is that of

a certain section who refuse to face facts and because they have a few

birds which are happy and return home if escaped, argue that all captive

birds are ideally kept and will do likewise ; the fallacy of which must

be plain to anyone who does not shut their eyes to what exists. Her innuendos

as regards Mr. Webb are in very bad taste, and her suggestion that isolated

individuals should remonstrate with offending dealers is, I am afraid, quite

futile.


P. Kingseord Venner.


P.S.—We should, of course, to be really effective, refuse to buy from anyone

who is not “ on our list ”.



IMPROPER IMPORTATION


I think it is certainly true that members of the Avicultural Society need

to give far more thought to the problem of devising means whereby the birds

they obtain for their collections receive humane treatment from the time they

are first caught. Even in quarters where they should not occur, there seem

to be far too much culpable ignorance and carelessness, and until certain

people mend their ways there is not the slightest reason to hope for the

modification of the Parrot ban. Last year, owing in part to an official

blunder, a large dealer and a person in a smaller way of business who is

more dealer than true aviculturist, imported under the usual filthy conditions

a large number of diseased psittacine birds from Australia. I had the mis¬

fortune to have some valuable birds, properly packed, on the same boat,

which caught the infection from the dealers’ birds and died, and caused some

inquiries by the Ministry of Health. I heard on very good authority that

the pseudo-aviculturist sold large numbers of his diseased stock in spite

of the fact that it is illegal to sell Parrot-like birds imported on a permit.


I hoped this would be the end of trouble of this kind, but a few months

ago a hen Rock Grass Parrakeet that I greatly needed died on the voyage,

although properly packed, and the Ministry of Health who made the post

mortem informed me that it was psittacosis and " several other Parrots ” had

died on the same boat. The “ several other parrots ” were presumably

imported by people other than the offenders of the previous year, and I feel

very strongly that they might have had both the humanity and the ordinary

gumption to see that their birds were sent over under decent conditions ;

for one thing is quite certain, and that is that you do not get outbreaks of

infectious enteritis, alias psittacosis, unless birds are overcrowded in dirty

travelling boxes.



Tavistock.



