10 Birds I Have Kept. 



the Ifansarde window of the nursery. How splendidly that 

 bird sang to be sure! The Nightingales in the little beechen 

 copse at the foot of the garden, were as nothing compared to 

 him in my estimation; and very likely he sang louder than 

 they did, if he had the Sky Lark note, but I cannot remember. 

 After a time my mother put a little wicker basket, lined 

 with flannel, into the cage, and in a few days four or five 

 little pale blue eggs speckled with brown were, much to my 

 satisfaction, laid. The young were hatched in due course, to 

 the great delight, I doubt not, of the parent birds, who stood 

 together on the edge of the basket, attentively peering down 

 at the ugly, helpless, pink little things below; which they 

 probably thought the prettiest little Canaries in the world, for 

 they talked together quite confidentially for a long time in a 

 low key, until one of the little ones opened its beak, when 

 they fed it, and the mother settled herself down again to 

 keep them warm. 



Those were my first Canaries: I wonder how many hun- 

 dreds, not to say thousands, have passed through my hands 

 since then. A bright yellow cock I once had paired with a 

 green hen, produced a beautiful fawn or dove-coloured bird, 

 of the kind now called cinnamon; and some others were vividly 

 green, with black wings and tail and orange breasts: while 

 others again were almost white. 



The origin of the domesticated Canary is, unfortunately, 

 lost in impenetrable obscurity, for in this iconoclastic age, the 

 story that connects it with the shipwreck off the Island of 

 Elba and the Canaria or Isles of Dogs in the Atlantic, is 

 exploded, and voted by common consent altogether unworthy 

 of belief, like many another venerable tradition; and we are 

 compelled, in our inability to replace it by one more trust- 

 worthy, to confess our utter ignorance on the subject, and 

 content ourselves therewith. However that may be, there are 

 at the present day several distinct varieties of the Canary, 

 which mostly breed true to colour and other characteristic 



