20 INHERITANCE IN CANARIES. 



between the male goldfinch and female canary. These hybrids have 

 been often described and they have been carefully analyzed by Klatt 

 (1901), who used, however, only museum material or descriptions and 

 knew little about the parents of the individual birds examined. Like 

 all other writers on the subject, Klatt lays emphasis on the great vari- 

 ability of the first generation of hybrids — a variability which is in 

 striking contrast to the uniformity exhibited by most first hybrids 

 between domesticated races. The hybrids between the goldfinch and 

 the canary are usually very dark — brown, black, and "green" pre- 

 dominating — but they usually show various yellow and white patches 

 which may be very extensive and, in extreme cases, result in almost 

 entire albinos. This variability demands an explanation. 



The goldfinch {JFri7igilla cardnelis Linnaeus), as shown in plate 2, 

 fig. 4, is marked on the head by a red patch on forehead and chin, a 

 black eye-stripe and a black cap extending back on to the nape, where 

 it is sharply cut off by a transverse white band. A pair of white areas 

 run up from the throat on the sides of the head to the black cap. On 

 the body, the back and sides are brown, this color extending also all 

 over the breast and upper wing coverts. The rest of the ventral body 

 is white. Yellow areas on the middle of the exposed portion of all 

 quill feathers form in the folded wing a yellow wing band, and the 

 quill feathers are tipped with white. 



When such a goldfinch was crossed with a crested yellow Harz 

 (plate 1, fig. 2) one of the hybrids was like plate 2, fig. 3. One can 

 see at a glance that the hybrid is not a mere combination of the 

 characters of the two parental forms, but is more like a green canary 

 combined with the goldfinch. First, a rudimentary crest is present. 

 The red of the face has become of a copper color (red + yellow) and 

 the cap is dark greenish (black + yellow). The breast and belly are 

 yellowish as in the "green" canary. The remiges are black with 

 lighter tips — a modified goldfinch character. The yellow wing-bar is 

 present, but reduced, combining the character of the goldfinch with 

 that of the green canary. The sides of breast and wing-coverts are 

 striped, due to a central blackening of the feathers — a character of the 

 green canary. It thus appears that characters of the green canary 

 predominate, but do not replace the more striking characters of the 

 goldfinch. 



The fact that the hybrids between the goldfinch and yellow canary 

 have many of the distinctive features of the "green" canary has been 

 frequently observed. Darwin, having heard of the streaked feathers 

 of the hybrid, concluded that "this streaking must have been derived 

 from the original wild canary;" and this case seemed to favor his 

 theory of reversion. Klatt (1901, 508) goes further and concludes 



