352 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



you let out a pair or a number they will wander off ; 

 though in at least one case where this has been 

 done a pair has stayed and bred, and the species is, 

 I believe, established at the Duke of Bedford's park 

 at Woburn. 



Besides the Canary, which is a bird of recent 

 European domestication, man has domesticated, at 

 some unknown date and in the far east of Asia, 

 two Weaver- Finches, the Java Sparrow (Munia 

 oryzivora), of which the domestic form is white 

 or pied, but with a strong tendency to revert to 

 the original lavender-grey, and the Sharp-tailed 

 Finch (Uroloncha acuticauda), a little brown bird 

 whose dark pied and cinnamon pied varieties 

 they are seldom pure white are known in the 

 bird trade as " Bengalese." Both wild and tame 

 forms of these two Finches are imported, but in 

 the Java the wild form is far the most common in 

 the bird trade, whereas with the other bird it is 

 very much the reverse. The Java Sparrow has been 

 established as a wild bird in many places in the 

 warm parts of the Old World, even as far from its 

 original home as Zanzibar and St. Helena. 



Finally, within the last half-century the Ostrich 

 has been fully domesticated, surely the most 

 remarkable of the conquests of man, this swift 

 creature of the desert being the very emblem of 

 freedom, in spite of its Sightlessness ; and this 

 domestication has not only saved it from much 

 persecution, but caused it to be transported to 

 most quarters of the globe, for there are Ostrich 



