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till each of canary-seed, red millet, and fine and white millet mixed. They

do not care for green food of any kind, nor banana or apple, so it is very

difficult to make a change in their diet. I am not able to put my Gouldians

outside, as I do not come down to the country until August, when it would

be too late to put them into an outside aviary for the first time; so I keep

them in a cage by themselves.


All my foreign birds like the red millet better than the white, and I

give them occasionally “Arthur’s mixture” mixed with cold potatoes. And

I find the birds in the outside aviary are very fond of cold potato by

itself, when I place it between the mesh of the aviary.


I have never found the Green Singing Finches or Saffron Finches

the least bit quarrelsome or egg-eaters. I give all my birds scraped cuttle¬

fish bone and rock-salt; I do not find that they care for the salt. The

Budgerigars are the only troublesome birds I have had : they killed the

first nest of young Saffron Finches and quarrelled together, so I had to

take them out of the aviary until the young Saffrons got old enough to

take care of themselves ; and I only put back one pair, which are now

nesting. The Popes and Cardinals have not attempted to breed.


I planted a small fir tree in the centre of the run and a box in each

corner, and the run is gravelled over ; but the fir tree was soon destroj'ed ;

the box trees, however, are still living. Mary Mii.^kr.



THE HOODED SISKIN AND THE WILD CANARY.


[The following extracts from a letter received from the Rev. H. D.

Astley (published by permission), and written from the Island of Teneriffe

“in almost constant and brilliant sunshine, with the temperature night

and day at 68°,” will probably interest many of our readers. The species he

refers to is quite new to me, but the painting enabled me without difficulty

to identify the bird as a male Hooded Siskin (Chrysomitris cucullata )—

exemplifying the great value of coloured plates. '■'■Habitat —Venezuela and

Trinidad. Introduced into Cuba and Porto Rico.”—R. P.]


I am enclosing you a very rough water-colour sketch of a lovely little

bird that I bought in Santa Cruz, and whose proper name I do not know.

Can you identify him for me ? I have never seen him in England, which

may be an oversight on my part. It is a Finch from Caracas (South America)

which is imported to Teneriffe, and mated with the Wild Canary, producing

a mule-binl like a Wild Canary dipped in saffron. The Caracas Finch is

called “Cardinal” by the Teneriffe people. I have also got a “ mista

Canaria,” alias a hybrid Canary; the father is the little orange Caracas

Finch, and the mother a Wild Canary.


Both these birds are thought highly of by the people in Santa Cruz.


The “Cardinal” (so-called) has a vivacious merry little song, which

reminds one of a Goldfinch and a Linnet (or Siskin); and his ways are very

much like a Goldfinch’s.


He has a shrill little call-note (or perhaps an alarm-note), like a

■sw^-sounding slate pencil drawn for half a second along a slate. Such a

jolly little bird, and quite tame when I let him out of his cage in a room.


The hybrid takes very much more after the Canary (Wild) than after

the “Cardinal.”


It is the shape and size of the former, with it’s song almost exactly



