Natural and Unnatural Food. 79 



From among this diversity of modes of feeding and widely varied practice, however, one truth 

 was eliminated, and it became no secret that certain food would affect colour in a sensible degree. 

 i;ach breeder, with the most commendable selfishness, kept his particular nostrum a profound 

 secret, but the existence of the fact was demonstrated over and over again by fanciers buying 

 high-coloured specimens, and utterly failing to moult them with anything like the same results. 

 Certain towns with their schools of breeders apparently had the game in their own hands, and the 

 secret, such it was, was jealously guarded for years. The difference between the colour of a bird 

 moulted on ordinary diet and one fed on ^x/r^-ordinary diet was not so marked at the period 

 to which we refer as it is in the present day, simply because the agents employed were not so 

 powerful in their action as those now in use ; but it was sufficient to give the feeder an advantage 

 over the breeder — an advantage he has ever held when both have started in the race on the same 

 terms as regards the quality of the birds. 



From what we have said it will be gathered that the verb "to moult" is both neuter and 

 active, and that we use it in the latter sense as signifying the indirect doing of something on the 

 part of the breeder, rather than expressing an action entirely confined to the bird. It includes in it 

 the idea of feeding by rule ; and we are quite prepared to be met at the outset with the question. Is 

 feeding, then, the whole secret of colour in the colour section of the Canary family t We are very 

 much inclined to answer that question by another and say, Why not .'' And we might ask one or 

 two more questions and say. What is the natural colour of the Canary .' Is not the assumption 

 of the fact that the colour in which it usually appears is its natural or proper colour, rather an 

 arbitrary assumption 1 If various descriptions of vegetable food, all of which it might find in a 

 state of nature, and which it eats with avidity, affect its colour in as many degrees, who shall say 

 that any one shade of colour is the colour, and that all other shades are improper and unnatural 

 because novel and comparatively unusual 1 Is not the word " unnatural " wrongly applied } For 

 how can anything be un-natural which is in direct accordance with Nature .' If any description of 

 food be literally un-natural, it is the artificial food which the bird could not find in a natural state ; 

 for Canaries do not gather hard-boiled eggs among the seeds and fruits of the earth, nor do they 

 find port wine in the brooks and pools by the wayside. Our idea of un-natural food would be the 

 mixing up of some diet the bird nauseated and forcing it down its throat. The results produced 

 might be strictly in harmony with natural laws, just as natural results follow a dose of strychnine. 

 Remember that the Canary has been a domesticated bird for centuries, is dependent upon us for 

 everything, and has no chance of showing us, by any voluntary act of its own, what it would eat, 

 drink, and avoid, if it had the opportunity for unlimited selection. For generations we have 

 followed the traditions of our forefathers, and have acted as if we believed that canary-seed alone 

 was created for the Canary, and the Canary for canary-seed, and that to supply it with anything 

 else of which it is fond, and which does it good, is — the meaningless term over again — unnatural. 

 Unusual, we admit, but most certainly not unnatural. Suppose a Canary to have escaped into a 

 conservatory, and to be observed feasting on some berries growing there in profusion, acrid and 

 poisonous to ourselves, but of marked benefit to the bird, improving its health, and by the action 

 of certain properties inherent in them, beautifying its plumage — what lunatic would call such food 

 unnatural, and such results unnatural, because, among other reasons, these berries happened not 

 to agree with ourselves .' The force of this and previous arguments will be seen presently. 



Our original proposition we put in the form of the question, whether feeding is the secret ot 

 colour? We now answer. Yes; and we have anticipated some of the objections which might 

 arise by asking the questions above propounded — questions which we think require no reply. 

 It is altogether foreign to the question to stay now to inquire Iww the colour is affected ; 



