The Modern Cinnamon. 275 



seen in its full beauty; and it is really a bewitching sight to 

 a true lover of this variety. 



But those great overgrown, dusky, murky, indefinite-looking 

 objects, with their natural greeny, drabbish, smoky-looking 

 hue, and "coarse feather (the worst points that a Cinnamon 

 bird can possibly possess), together with light-coloured throats, 

 pale washy-looking breasts, sides, vents, and rumps, with long 

 greenish, dusky stripes displayed on their backs and sides, 

 fill a genuine admirer of this variety with disgust and loathing. 

 Why sacrifice every quality that a good specimen possesses 

 merely to obtain size ? To me it seems simply madness. Size 

 can only be obtained by crossing with the Dutch or Lancashire 

 birds, and the latter are the lineal descendants of the old Dutch 

 canary. In every other feature except size, such a cross tends 

 to detract from the chance of producing a high-class repre- 

 sentative of the Cinnamon proper. Get size by all legitimate 

 means that you possibly can, by selection, by breeding from 

 double buffs, by the introduction of an exceptionally good 

 crested-bred bird, inheriting in a large degree the rich colour 

 and fine feather of the Norwich plain-head, but eschew the 

 direct use of the Lancashire plain-head to obtain your object. 

 But the present mode of breeding is first to put a plain-head 

 Lancashire cock with a Norwich Cinnamon hen, and from this 

 cross to obtain green and variegated green cocks, and clear 

 and variegated hens, and Cinnamon variegated occasionally, 

 if the Cinnamon blood be reliable and pure. These birds are 

 crossed with Cinnamon birds again, and green and Cinnamons 

 are produced, but " size ! size ! " is still the cry, and the 

 Lancashire bird is again resorted to, and this process is 

 continued until ultimately a three-parts bred Lancashire 

 Cinnamon is produced, with all or most of the faults I have 

 specified, and then cayenne is resorted to, to cover all these 

 defects. Oh, this cayenne! It is really the bug-bear of the 

 fancy, if not the curse of it, and has done so much harm 

 to some breeds that ten years of careful and honest breeding 

 would not suffice to eradicate all the evils which have followed 

 in its train. There is no kind of science in this kind of breeding, 



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