Note 75 — NATURAL HISTORY OF CAGE BIRDS. (continued 6)

The means of always having a plentiful supply of meal worms is to fill a large earthenware or brown stone jar with wheat bran, barley or oatmeal, and put into it some pieces of sugar paper or old shoe leather. Into each of these jars, of about two quarts in size, half a pint of meal worms is thrown (these may be bought at any baker’s or miller’r), and by leaving them quiet for three months, covered with a bit of woollen cloth soaked in beer, or merely in water, they will change into beetles (Tenebrio Molitor, Linnæus). These insects soon propagate by eggs, which renew and increase the number of maggots so much that one such jar will maintain a nightingale.—Author.