288 



thereby prevented from remaining the pigmy of the 

 purely fancy race of Canaries. 



Exceptionally large Canaries and hybrids have 

 been bred in my own aviaries without using a particle 

 of this substance, or indeed anything beyond the 

 ordinary seeds (including hemp and oats), green stuflf, 

 and a few bread crumbs, but simply by relying upon 

 parent birds of 7iaturally large size, and upon their 

 tendency to produce offspring with more or less their 

 own characteristics. And what can be done by one 

 man can be done by another. So much, therefore, for 

 the value of ^'g% as far as this is concerned. 



If colour feeding is embarked upon, then the 

 colouring agent can be given in plenty of excipients 

 other than ^%%, The presumed difl&culties in connec- 

 tion with this can be easily got over by mixing the 

 colour with such substances as oatmeal, satoo, or 

 ordinary pea-flour, all of which are highly nutritious 

 and highly acceptable to birds as soon as they have 

 been taught to eat them — a matter that presents no 

 difficulty whatever. 



It has been urged by some of those who, unlike 

 the Athenians, avoid that which is new and who 

 worship only at the dimly lighted shrines of European 

 mediaevalism, while admitting that what they call the 

 hardier section of birds may possibly be yet more 

 hardy when removed from the influence of ^g^, that 

 the insectivorous species cannot be kept alive in 

 captivity if deprived of this fetish-like material. On 

 this point they are very emphatic, but I am afraid 

 that these gentlemen, misled by the arbitrary lines 

 that are necessarily adopted by the systematic 

 naturalists, and knowing little or nothing of the true 

 facts comprising the operations of digestion or of the 

 physiological gradations by insensible steps that exist 

 from one end of the avine scale to the other, are 



