Marking the Strains. 69 



parents till the second is on the eve of hatching. This is the way to make fine birds ; they never 

 want for a moment, and never seem to feel the isolation which attends their being put on the other 

 side of the front door, while pcor old paterfamilias tells them as he drops the portcullis, " You see 

 there is a second family coming on, and you really must turn out ; if you require anything, come 

 to me and I will supply you ; but you must do your best to shift for yourselves entirely as soon as 

 possible." Canary life has its parallels. 



We have found it of great advantage to supply birds in the intermediate stage with ground 

 seed. Canary-seed is, of course, the staff of life ; but a variety of other seeds can be used with 

 benefit. The coffee-mill will come into use now ; it can be set to grind fine, or merely to crush, 

 doing, in fact, little else than crack the husk — a feat the young bird cannot as yet accomplish for 

 itself, or only with some difficulty. A mixture of canary, groats, a little millet, linseed, and even 

 a pinch of hemp-seed, can all be passed through the mill, and put inside the cage. One lesson at a 

 time is sufficient ; and until they learn to eat their seed they should not have to go far to find it. 

 A week of this kind of treatment will go a long way towards maturing the birds ; and if a little 

 whole seed be added, and it is seen that they can hull it without much trouble, it is time to 

 be thinking of transferring them to the large flight-cage, where they will have more room 

 for exercise. 



Before taking this final step the breeder will have to mark the different nests, so that each 

 bird can be recognised at a future day. This is absolutely necessary in a room in which breeding 

 means something more than putting up so many pairs of birds every year without any regard to 

 their parentage, and with no more definite end in view than producing as many young ones as 

 possible. Such is not what a fancier means by breeding. He will have been endeavouring to 

 build with material of which he knows something, and in that endeavour has not been groping in 

 the dark and trusting to chance. He has been keeping before him one object, and all his work 

 tends in that direction. He has planned to produce certain results, now and in the future, and 

 these results must be chronicled in some way to guide him in his work. Here are several birds 

 which, to any one else but himself, simply mean Canaries. They are very much alike, so much so 

 that he can scarcely tell one from the other ; but to him each represents some Hnk in a chain he 

 is forging, some stone dressed and carved into shape, and destined to fill a particular niche in the 

 little edifice he has designed; and each should be duly marked and numbered, so that when required 

 it can at once be put in its proper place and to its proper use. They are more than this : they 

 represent certain elements evolved from raw material he has been passing through the crucible, 

 and are intended to be combined with other elements, also duly labelled and marked with sundry 

 hieroglyphics — indicating their character, whence sprung, and what capable of effecting. There 

 should be no confusion and no mistakes ; nothing left to memory, but every bird's pedigree and 

 age registered on the bird itself by a simple system of notching the inside web of the wing- 

 feathers, which in no way interferes with the appearance of the bird, and is not discernible until 

 the wing is examined in the hand. With two wings at disposal, and not less than, say, ten feathers 

 in each to mark on, the breeder requires nothing more than a sharp pair of small scissors to enable 

 him, with the exercise of a little ingenuity, to contrive a set of notches representing numbers 

 corresponding with the number of the cages, and to indicate also the fact of the bird having 

 belonged to the first, second, third, or fourth nest, thus giving its age to a week. The notched 

 wing becomes, in fact, the private index to the stock-book. 



The larger and more roomy the flight-cages are, the better it is for the birds. Here they do 

 their growing, and for the first eight weeks of their lives they ought to have nothing else to think 

 about. Every condition which can possibly conduce to this end must be complied with. Over- 



