THE
NATURAL HISTORY
OF
C A G E B I R D S :
THEIR
MANAGEMENT, HABITS, FOOD, DISEASES, TREATMENT, BREEDING,
AND
THE METHODS OF CATCHING THEM.
BY
J. M. BECHSTEIN, M.D., &c. &c.,
OF WALTERSHAUSEN, IN SAXONY.
----------------
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
The
Natural History of Cage Birds,
which I now lay before the public, is a work I have long
been solicited to write. There are many people who like
to keep birds, who neither know their habits nor the
proper treatment or food requisite for them. Even those
who are not altogether ignorant of these, often have but
very limited, superficial, and, what is worse, sometimes
erroneous ideas on the subject. It is for such readers I
have given the following Introduction; for professed
naturalists will find nothing there but what they have
already learnt, either from my own works or from those
of other authors on natural history.
If long
experience and minute observation on the subject of his
work is calculated to gain an author credit, I flatter
myself that this will not be denied me, since from my
earliest youth I have delighted in being surrounded with
birds, and am so accustomed to them that I cannot write
at my desk...................... |
