152 



A small good-type mule, full of natural colour, is far 

 better than a big coarse bird that has nothing to 

 recommend it except its size and the amount of red 

 pepper it can be made to carry. 



While on the subject of colour, I will try and more 

 fully explain a point my friend Mr. Peregrine Ball drew 

 my attention to — that is, while I say that yellow mules 

 cannot be bred from buff hens, he very clearly proves a 

 case where he obtained a 3'ellow bird from a buff hen. 

 But I think this exception proves the rule. The 

 explanation he gives (for which I am exceedingly 

 obliged to him) goes a long way to explain matters, as the 

 hen in question was bred from double yellows, and so, 

 no doubt, was so full of colour, although not shewing it, 

 that to throw a yellow young one was an event that 

 might almost be expected. Of course the line between 

 yellows and buffs must be drawn somewhere, and in this 

 case it must have been so fine that it was almost im- 

 perceptible. Many of you, no doubt, know that there 

 are both 3-ellow and buff finches, and such a hen as I 

 have described, if paired with a yellow finch, might 

 almost be expected to produce a yellow^ mule. 



In looking through the various classes of finches at 

 last Crystal Palace vShow, in a good light, the yellow 

 birds could very easily be distinguished from the paler 

 ones. In some kinds, notably the Siskins and Green- 

 finches, the difference was very marked. I think, when 

 you have to use a buff hen in muling, a yellow finch 

 should, if possible, be selected for its mate. 



Since our Club was formed, one of the most knotty 

 points it has been called upon to decide was the question 

 of the supposed Canary-Bullfinch ; and although, at the 

 time, the Club came, in my opinion, to a wrong con- 

 clusion, it has since remedied the mistake and admitted 

 that the bird after all, in spite of its breeder's sworn 

 affadavit to the contrary, was a Canary-Bullfinch. I 

 l)elieve that, looked at by the side of the existing bird 

 bred by our member Mr. Pratt, no one could come to 

 any other conclusion about its parentage than that it 



