CHAPTER XXV 



WASHING CANARIES. 



To the uninitiated, washing birds is not only a tedious but a 

 difficult operation, and one not unfrequently attended with fatal 

 results in the hands of inexperienced manipulators, but to those 

 who have been regularly accustomed to prepare birds for exhi- 

 bition, for any lengthened period, it becomes a matter of small 

 concern, and a bird is toiletted and put through its ablutions 

 without the least compunction or misgiving ; but for all that it 

 requires great care and skill to do it well and satisfactorily. If 

 a bird is improperly washed it looks worse than it would do if it 

 were moderately dirty. 



Fanciers who live in suburban residences or in the country do 

 not require to wash their birds so frequently for exhibition as 

 those people who live in large over- grown towns where smoke 

 and dust appear as though tney were component parts of the 

 atmosphere, so that clean, sprightly, gay-coloured birds get so 

 begrimed and so besmeared with dirt, that they are barely 

 recognisable a week after they have been washed. In all such 

 cases as these, birds shown for colour chiefly, or even where colour 

 forms an important consideration, must of necessity be washed 

 for each show at which they are intended to be exhibited, other- 

 wise the labour and expense incurred in sending them will be 

 entirely thrown away, for unless a bird is as clean " as paint " it 

 has a meagre chance of success. 



A number of amateur fanciers nowadays rush headlong into 

 the too prevalent practice of claiming prize birds, thinking, as 



