7S 



CHAPTER X. 



MOULTING ON CAYENNE. 



We propose now to consider the question of moulting from a point of view which clothes it 

 with a profounder interest than that felt by the fancier when regarding it as a simple, natural 

 phenomenon common to bird-life. He divides the whole Canary family into three principal 

 groups, comprising the colour section; those having distinctive plumage; and the birds of shape and 

 position. With the first of these, moulting has everything to do ; and the specific treatment and 

 special dieting practised while the operation is going on, with a view to inducing the development 

 of colour, has ever occupied the closest attention of those breeders who have made the colour 

 section their speciality; and such are by far the larger number of the body comprising the great 

 world of the Fancy. The problem of what is colour, how produced, and how affected .? is one 

 which breeders have long tried to work out, each in his own way, according to his own theory, 

 with varying success. That some Canaries have the native property of developing it to a greater 

 extent than others, is patent. We know why some violets are blue, and why some are not blue ; 

 why grass is green, and how it is that flowers are painted with parti-coloured tints. And there 

 must be a reason why some birds are decked with all the colours of the rainbow ; some law which 

 governs the change in the hues of the summer and winter plumage of certain of our native birds, 

 as well as the more strongly-marked changes in those coming to us from tropical climes. What 

 colour really is, what its chemical constituents, can all be clearly defined ; but how, when fed from 

 the same fountain, we find it existing in so many separate hues in one and the same member, a 

 single feather to wit, is a mystery seemingly as Incomprehensible as some of the higher mysteries 

 which man, in the plenitude of his wisdom (.'), refuses to believe, in the face of the most positive 

 evidences of their existence, simply because his mind cannot fathom them. 



This, however, is not a treatise on the mysteries of creation, but on the more practical matter 

 of moulting Canaries. A thoughtful consideration of the fact that in the earliest stage of their 

 growth the feathers of the Canary, as of all other birds, are not feathers, but simply little tubes in 

 which the blood circulates, and which eventually develop into what we call feathers, the web of 

 which is nothing more than an expansion and minute ramification of the material of which the 

 whole is composed, led to the supposition that the colouring matter must be manufactured in, and 

 deposited by, the blood ; and various theories were propounded and methods devised for bringing 

 about this result. The fact that certain food is known to have the direct effect of colouring the 

 fat, and even the bones of animals, seemed to support the theory; and the notion of feeding the 

 feather from its birth, and while in embryo before its birth, took a strong hold on the minds of 

 breeders, though the idea was but very imperfectly developed, and, we should imagine, in many 

 cases worked out in a very clumsy way, and without any clear perception of the principle involved. 

 Anything "yellow" that the bird would eat was supplied to it ; no matter what it was, or whether it 

 was a substance the bird could digest and assimilate: so long as it was yellow, that was sufficient ; 

 and we have heard of the most extraordinary compounds having been administered in the shape of 

 pills, powders, draughts, anything and everything, any way and every way, no matter what or how, 

 if colour might only be born of it. 



