CHAPTER XXVI 

 CANARY CULTURE 



CANARIES are probably the smallest of any animals 

 habitually bred and exhibited for profit. They are 

 also the latest in date of any domesticated creature 

 perhaps the only one the date of whose domestication 

 is recorded. Yet they are so popular that at the great 

 shows in the autumn the number exhibited often exceeds 

 a thousand ; though the extraordinary and permanent 

 differences of colour and form acquired by these little 

 birds since they became the household pets of Europe 

 may be seen, perhaps, better in a small collection than 

 in one where the specimens of each kind are numbered 

 by scores. 



The chance by which a little greenish finch, from 

 an insignificant group of islands on the West African 

 trade-route, has been adopted as the pet cage-bird 

 of every European nation, is one of the accidents of 

 domestication. Neither the plumage nor the song of 

 the canary in its wild state are such as to mark it out 

 specially for selection as a pet ; though, as compared 

 with the tropical birds met farther south along the 

 West African coast, its linnet-like song is an echo 

 of the bird-voices of the gardens of Europe. The 

 Portuguese and Spanish sailors, in their first ad- 



186 



