OUR HEALTHY BIRDS.
Maladies among our birds are very rare. Pigeons, here as in North America, may suffer most distressfully from throat diseases, and the numbers differ enormously—especially in Canada—from year to year. Many of our game birds, especially grouse and pheasant, fall before a variety of microbic attacks, but there the list almost closes. Ups and downs in population have been sharp, notably among long.
tailed tits and goldfinches—both now very numerous—red- starts; redwings, plover, swallows, and nightingales ; but the cause has been traced in every case, I think, either to hard weather or human intervention. We have deliberately killed them, or so altered our system of cultivation that they can no longer nest successfully. A bird one would expect to suffer from maladies is the starling, which fouls its favourite ground or roosting place much more thoroughly than the pheasant,'even in the narrowest and most artificial preserves; On this subject, it was again proved this year that nothing has been more effective in increasing the stock of partridges than the scattering of any good insect powder among the eggs * * * *
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