‘Pretty Dick.'

New Zealand Mail, Issue 810, 9 September 1887, Page 4

‘Pretty Dick.'

Our pet canaries are often troubled with a wheezing in the chest, which, from its resemblance to what is known as asthma in human beings, is given the same name. It is not, however, asthma, but an effect on the lungs. The cause is not far to seek. Canaries can bear great extremes of heat and cold, delicately framed though they be ; but they cannot stand sudden transitions from one to the other. When they are kept in a room where the temperature is very variable perhaps close to a draughty window during the day, with a hot, vitiated atmosphere from burning gas in the evening, and later on the other extreme of cold, we must not wonder if the lungs are affected. It is therefore important that care should be taken to prevent such a state of things, and this is best done by hanging the cage below the middle bar of the window, or, what is better, standing it on a table some distance away, and then, when the gas is lit, the cage can be covered over, and put on the floor, in one corner of the room, as the temperature will be more equal there than higher up. If such a plan he adopted, the so-ca lei asthma will be prevented ; but if it is found, a little tincture of aconite is the best remedy say a drop to a teaspoonful of water divided into two doses.