i6 



Canaries and Cage-Birds. 



many respects a very inquisitive character, it has no intuition whicli teaches it that water exists for 

 it, not in brooks or pools, but in a glass globe inverted in an earthenware pot which may look to 

 the bird as much like an engine of war as anything else. Many Canaries, when changed from 

 one cage to another and required to put their heads through a hole into a formidable-looking 

 covered-in vessel in search of what they had been accustomed to find in an open trough, have 

 never found their water, and have died before the matter could be remedied. It is therefore 

 necessary, in using covered-in vessels in the aviary, to see that young birds and new-comers find 

 their way to them : a " general management " hint, but not out of place. 



A bath is the last requisite, and nothing is more suitable for the purpose than a large shallow 

 dish, which should be introduced every day for an hour or two. If this be done before sweeping- 

 up time, there will not be much dust. There is no danger in leaving a bath in the room 

 constantly, provided the water be not more than one or two inches deep ; but not much is gained 

 by it, because unless nearly all the birds bathe at the same time, those which are not in the 

 humour to do so while the water is clean will not bathe after it has become dirtied. Familiarity 

 with the bath also seems to do away with the desire to use it ; whereas, if it be introduced only for 

 a short time during the day, the birds splash into it "head over ears" almost before it can be 

 placed on the ground, the washing, drying, clear-starching, and ironing occupying them a full 

 hour or more. 



The in-door aviary may be carried out to the utmost extent of elegance and elaboration. 

 What it may be made is suggested by the sketch on page 12. But even in such an ornitho- 

 logical paradise, the essential matters to be attended to will be just the same and no more, than 

 such as have already been mentioned. 



Such we take to be the leading features of the aviary system ; which, it will be manifest, can 

 never become the fancier's modus operandi so much as a means of general interest and source of 

 pleasure, derivable from general observation rather than the carrying out of any specific system 

 of breeding with the object of bringing about definite results. It has been our aim to present it 

 in this light, as being its true sphere ; feeling assured that those who make it their world will 

 discover in it many beauties we have failed to point out, and will find it insensibly becoming 

 peopled with creations of which they once knew nothing, with which they can hold converse and 

 enter into companionship, and find their own world of observation considerably enlarged by taking 

 even this small peep into one portion of the vast domain open to the inquirer who, at every step, 

 recognises the evidences of a Wisdom " past finding out." 



