THE CANARY. 2 7 



of the sorts of diet and ' care ' which you give him." 

 To those who know me I do not need to explain the 

 above statements, but I make them so that those 

 whom I do not personally know may understand that 

 whatever courses of food and treatment are proposed 

 in the following pages are the results of careful tests 

 and close analyses, and have been used, not in a few 

 isolated cases, but with many subjects through many 

 years. 



FOOD FOR A SINGING CANARY is as follows : for 

 food give only German summer rape seed, it is the 

 smaller rape, reddish brown, not the large black rape, 

 and Sicily canary seed, large, bright, free from 

 dust, mixed, equal parts, and purchased, not at the 

 nearest grocery, drug, or fancy goods store, as there 

 is as great difference in the quality of bird seed as 

 in teas and coffees, but at a bird store. Give only 

 a small quantity, a large teaspoonful if the bird can 

 reach it all, so he will be compelled to eat the rape. 

 If a bird eats too much canary it is very bad for 

 him, and generally soon ruins his song. If a canary 

 selects all the canary and does not eat the rape, that is 

 the time to give less canary and four-fifths rape, or else 

 all rape. Keep gravel paper, or washed, silver, loose 

 gravel on thick paper, in the cage ; the paper keeps 

 the bird's feet from the metal. A cuttle-bone should 

 always hang in the cage. One tenth of both white 

 and yolk of a hard-boiled egg, grated, should be given 

 twice a week, and, in moulting season, every day; a 

 piece of apple, the size of a thimble, sweet if it can be 

 had, two or three times a week ; apple is better than 



