24 THE CANARY BIRD. 



It is recommended by some breeders, as 

 soon as the Canary has laid, to take out the 

 egg every morning and substitute an ivory 

 one ; when the hen has done laying, take the 

 ivory eggs away, and set her upon the whole 

 of her own. Naturalists say that it gives the 

 hen more satisfaction to see them come suc- 

 cessively one after the other ; but experience 

 has shown us that it is the better way to sub- 

 stitute the ivory egg, and daily take away the 

 laid one, till she lays her complement ; and 

 also to examine the eggs after the hen has 

 been sitting eight days upon them, to save 

 time and useless fatigue to the mother ; let all 

 this, however, be done with as little annoy- 

 ance as possible. 



Some females in breeding are very careless 

 mothers, a fault which is not very easily done 

 away with. Therefore, if they cannot be 

 brought to do any thrift the first season, avoid 

 another season's trial. 



Others will eat their eggs, as will sometimes 

 also the male. The best way to prevent this, 

 is to feed the bird very early every morning 

 with bread and egg, or the last thing at night 

 for the morning, for the hen no sooner lays 

 her egg than she leaves the nest, and flies 

 round the cage in search of food, which if 

 she does not find, and that too in some deli- 

 cate or dainty form, she returns to the nest in 

 a rage, and seems to break the eggs out of 

 pure spite, more than from desire to eat them. 



As another precaution when the hen is ad- 

 dicted to this vice, the usual period for the 



