Heating Apparatus. ig 



No breeding-room can be said to be complete without some kind of heating apparatus. To 

 this it is probable some may demur, but we can only say in reply that those are fortunate who can 

 do without it. Such a variety of circumstances combine to make the usage of one district different 

 from that of another, that the "custom of the port," with its statistical results, must not be accepted 

 as a standard rule calculated to produce the like elsewhere. Difference in latitude and variation 

 in other physical relations make just all the difference between the natural productions of any tv/o 

 places, and a certain amount of artificial treatment must be resorted to in order to bring them on a 

 par. We do not say that Canaries would feel the rigour of an ordinary English winter more in 

 one part of the country than in another, but the critical time is when Nature begins to wake up 

 from her winter's sleep. In some places she seems to slumber with one eye open, and in others 

 to relapse into a state of such insensibility as if there would be no awakening. In the one 

 instance she is quick in answering to the call, and balmy airs soon arouse her from temporary 

 inactivity : in the other, pulse is almost dead and circulation is induced only by long and gradual 

 effort. 



So with occupants of our bird-rooms, who are soon affected by external influences ; their 

 awakening in-doors is simultaneous with that out-of-doors, and every swelling bud or early 

 spring flower is but the indicator of a corresponding spring-time in bird-life. Where the one is 

 late in being roused into life, so is the other ; and we hear in some places of pairing, nesting, 

 breeding, and all the excitement attending it, weeks, aye, almost months before those in a less 

 favoured district dare even think of making any preparations for the campaign, lest too much 

 haste might result in disaster. To obviate the evils arising from this, prudence would suggest that 

 where a reasonably early start is contemplated, something should be done to assist in maintaining 

 an equable temperature, so that breeding operations may be followed out independently of the 

 weather. The way in which Canaries are affected by climatic alternations will be pointed out in our 

 chapters on general management ; our object here is to explain a simple way of warming the 

 breeding-room, by which means the dangers attendant on early nests may be averted, and other 

 disagreeables which wait on a late spring considerably ameliorated. This last is the true object 

 of artificial heating ; not to force birds out of season, but to make the most of them in season 

 ■ — to combat adverse circumstances by means the most nearly approximating to those employed 

 by Nature. 



Years have passed since we first drew attention to a simple little gas-stove in use in our 

 own breeding-room, which did its work so well and so cheaply that we thought we could 

 recommend nothing more suitable for the purpose; and we still think it as handy and effective 

 a contrivance as more expensive and complicated apparatus. But gas is not at command every- 

 where, though the march of civilisation has made the conventional lamp-post almost as necessary 

 a part of an English landscape as a row of telegraph-posts, or the martial helmet and awe-inspiring 

 buttons of the member of the county force who turns up in the most secluded and romantic spots. 

 Our Transatlantic cousins, however, have supplied us with a new source of light and heat, which 

 has been applied in ways once never dreamt of; and the paraffin oil pump is almost as common 

 an ornament in the village grocer's store as the beer-engine with its array of bulbous porcelain 

 handles in the bar of the public-house. The simple contrivance we are about to describe is worked 

 almost as effectively with the aid of a small paraffin lamp as with gas. Small stoves, in which paraffin, 

 or petroleum, or shale oil in some form is the combustible employed, are to be purchased in endless 

 variety, and will doubtless perform all asserted of them ; but we have not tried any of them. Our 

 own apparatus we have tested thoroughly, and can confidently recommend. It consists simply of 

 a cylinder of ordinary sheet iron, about eighteen inches in height and eight in diameter, enclosed 



