108 THE ROLLER CANARY 
FAULTLESS BIRDS NOT ALWAYS THE BEST 
If a man has the good luck to possess a champion 
that has no fault, then he doesn’t need advice from any 
man to use him. But either in contest, breeding-room 
or training-room I would never put back a good bird 
just because he had one fault in an otherwise grand 
song, and put over him a bird not so good, even though 
the latter did not commit a fault which could be 
penalized. 
It would mean putting many a real champion with 
one fault into a back seat and hoisting up into premier 
place third-rate birds whose faults don’t happen to come 
into the catalogued list where the judge puts down a 
straight stroke, often with a sigh. He has to let the 
inferior bird go free, except that he sees he doesn’t get 
many for his general effect. 
It may be said that these faultless (so-called) birds are 
bound to be good, for, as well as being unpenalized, they 
reach their thirty points or so. But that is not the case. 
A judge has to put down the value of the individual 
tours when they are sung, however badly those tours 
are connected, however infrequently the deep tours are 
heard. 
The scores of a bird are only a rough guide to his 
value. You cannot put down on paper all that goes to 
make your champion on the judging-table. His habit of 
song, his organ-like volume of tone, his steady habit of 
dwelling on the difficult and hard tours, his contemp- 
tuous touching of the lighter tours as something 
unworthy of him—you cannot put down on paper all 
those virtues in him that make you wish he was yours, 
any more than you can put down all those uncatalogued 
