yi INTRODUCTION. 



Hunting Grounds" a messenger from the Great 

 Spirit to His children upon earth. 



" Lord," said good Izaak Walton, as he listened to 

 the song of the Nightingale, " what music hast thou 

 provided for the saints in heaven, when thou givest 

 bad men such music on earth ? " 



That the subject of our little work is one that will 

 interest many readers, we can scarcely entertain a 

 doubt. There are few persons who have not, at 

 some period or other of their lives, nourished and 

 cherished a feathered pet j of one of these " blythe 

 spirits" the universal favorite, the Canary, we pro- 

 pose to treat in the chapters of our unpretentious 

 book. 



A great many people think that to confine birds is 

 cruel. If it were so, indeed, few would be the cage 

 birds one would wish to see ; but happily, on the 

 contrary, for those who, like myself, are fond of the 

 little songsters, the more we know about them, the 

 more we are satisfied that theirs is a happy prison. 

 Not for all birds by any means ; some would break 

 their hearts, if confined in a cage. The birds of pas- 

 sage, all those that come and go, should never be 

 kept from the sunny skies they seek as winter comes. 

 But with the Canary, as well as a variety of other 

 birds, reared in cages and knowing nothing of that 



