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CHAPTER IV. 



THE BREEDING-ROOM. 



A fancier's Canary-room should be selected with some amount of care. Any room will not 

 do, though too frequently any room has to do, on the " Hobson's choice" principle. The birds 

 have to spend their lives in it, and it is only a question of common sense to insist that the con- 

 ditions under which they live shall be as favourable as possible. We say " as possible," because a 

 fancier cannot always have everything exactly as he may wish, but is obliged to make the best of 

 things as he finds them ; not a bad plan in other matters besides the selection of a Canary-room. It 

 is not every house in which there is a spare room, or in which the spare room is the most suitable 

 for the purpose; but endeavour to secure one which has the full benefit of the morning sun, without, 

 however, being exposed to the mid-day heat, which renders the atmosphere of any bird-room very 

 uncomfortable. No one ever questions the fact that it is the early bird that catches the worm ; 

 though, in inculcating the moral lessons deducible from this particular phase of animal life, the 

 unhappy fate of the worm has been held up as a warning to early risers. Birds are, however, the 

 most practical exponents of the " early to bed and early to rise " principle we know of, and it is 

 therefore not well to place them under circumstances which, to a great extent, subvert this order 

 of things. The first streak of daylight sees them on the move, and long before the close of day 

 their heads are tucked under their wings. Their day is not our day, but we are very apt to forget 

 it. The value of the early sunshine to them is incalculable, enabling them to begin work at a 

 time in accordance with their natural instincts, not the least important part of which is to attend 

 to the wants of their young, who fully enter into the spirit of the early worm theory. Canaries 

 will also make a longer season in a room where they are not done up by the heat, which seems 

 to fag them out and throw them into moult before the proper season. With muling stock — i.e., 

 hens kept exclusively for breeding Goldfinch and other hybrids — this is a matter of the utmost 

 importance, as their season does not begin till the Canary season is half spent, and the value of 

 late nests will be sufficiently apparent. A cool room virtually prolongs a season, and the difference 

 between losing a nest and gaining an extra one amounts to two, which is a valuable consideration. 



Avoid a room abutting on to the house, in the way so many of the kitchens, with a room over- 

 head, are built in the yards of small tenements now-a-days. These rooms have generally very thin 

 walls, and have at least two sides exposed, making them miserably cold in winter and as hot in 

 summer. The temperature out-of-doors is much more equable than in a place of this kind, and, 

 as we have shown, birds can stand that without inconvenience ; but sudden alternations are most 

 injurious, and to these they are sure to be subject in a room such as we have referred to. We 

 have more than one such in mind while penning these lines, and have not known a really good 

 season's work to have been carried out in any of them ; and knowing how sensitive the Canary is 

 to sudden and frequent changes of temperature, we attribute the want of success as much to this 

 cause as to any other. It is a cause, too, which affects the bird most at a time when it is least able 

 to bear up against it ; and that is during the breeding season, when the hens, at least, are not in a 

 normal condition as regards health, but are more or less affected by the state of body natural to the 

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