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the Canary as we know it. This same gentleman, un- 

 fortunately like many more of our would be instruc- 

 tors in biological matters, seems rather confused in his 

 ideas, for having fixed the parentage as above on a bird 

 indigenous to the southern peninsula of the African 

 Continent, he mixes truth with error by going on to 

 say that the natural habitat of the Wild Canary is 

 Madeira, the Canaries, the Azores, and the Cape Verd 

 islands, a scattered group lying about 4000 miles away 

 Lo the north-west and where the Serinus canicollis is 

 not known as an inhabitant. He of course gives us 

 the old story of the wreck, and here again makes a 

 curious mistake. This antique chestnut — whether it 

 is worthy of credence or not — was intended to convey 

 to our minds that a vessel coming from the Canary 

 isles, and carrying a consignment of the native birds, 

 was wrecked off lyCghorn in Italy, whither it was 

 bound, and that through this accident the birds thus 

 liberated, (how and why?), got a settlement on the 

 isles of the Mediterranean, notably in Elba, or Ilva as 

 it was then called, and thence became domesticated iii 

 Europe by the intervention of the bird-catcher of the 

 period. But our commentator throws a new light on 

 this story by telling us that the Canary is 7iaturatised 

 in St. Helena with descendants of birds which escaped 

 from the wreck at Leghorn and sought refuge on this 

 island ! thenceforth becoming part of its avifauna. 

 A glance at the relative positions on the map of all 

 the places named sets us wondering what on earth 

 these poor birds, just escaped from the perils of storm 

 and wreck, could see in a perfectly strange island 

 5000 miles away sufficiently attractive to make them 

 set aside the more manifest advantages of Elba ready 

 to hand, or even those of their native home about 

 midway between the two ! * 



• The Serinus flaviventris, really a South African species, is naturalized 

 in St. Helena, where I am told it is sometimes called the "Emperor." 



