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CHAPTER XI. 



THE NORWICH CANARY. 



We now turn from these details of general management to a description of the different varieties 

 of the Canary and the classes into which they are divided, with specific instructions as to the 

 method of breeding them, and such further remarks on management as may be special in their 

 application. We propose to arrange them in three sections, each based on some distinguishing 

 feature. This, we think, is the most natural course to follow, and we accordingly divide them 

 into {a) Colour Birds ; {b) Distinctive Plumage Birds ; (c) Shape and Position Birds. At the 

 head of the colour group stands the NORWICH Canary, perhaps the most general favourite of 

 the entire tribe, and certainly the most extensively bred, being the embodiment of the popular 

 idea of the bird, and the fountain from whence spring three-fourths of the drawing-room 

 cage-birds in the country. It is easily recognised as a brilliantly-illuminated edition of the 

 every-day Yellow Canary. It takes its name from the city in which it has for generations 

 been cultivated, and where it doubtless built up for itself a character so decided as to cause 

 it in early times to be recognised as possessing features sufficiently distinctive to identify it with 

 the name of the place in which it had become localised, and as distinguishing it from other 

 varieties already established. It is more than probable that the cultivation of this bird as a 

 speciality began in the latter quarter of the sixteenth century, when the Flemish, driven from 

 their country by the persecutions of the Spanish under the Duke of Alva, took refuge in our 

 "right little, tight little island," indirectly repaying us for the protection afforded them by the 

 impetus they gave to some of our manufactures. A great number of these refugees settled in the 

 county of Norfolk, where they found congenial employment in the woollen manufacturies which 

 had been originally established at Worsted by their kinsmen more than four centuries before, 

 under the fostering care of the first Henry, just in the same way as the silk-weavers, driven from 

 France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, found their way to London, and, by 

 their skill, gave an impulse to our silk trade. Canary-breeding, we know, had by this time spread 

 through a great part of Germany, and was extensively engaged in in the Netherlands ; and it is 

 only natural to suppose that the refugees, in escaping with their little all to find a new home, 

 would not leave behind them all their home associations and pleasures, but would carry with them 

 their tastes and likings for natural pursuits, which could not fail to commend themselves to, and 

 spread rapidly among, the population round about them. From that day to this — for the 

 introduction of steam-power into many of our manufactures is only comparatively an event of 

 the day before yesterday — the nature of the occupation and the character of the inhabitants has 

 changed but little ; and though the iron horse now waits at the pit's mouth, ready to run his 

 heavy load across streams bridged for his convenience, over valleys filled up to make him a 

 highway, and through hills levelled or pierced to remove every obstruction from his path on the 

 iron road, and deposits it by thousands of tons where the noise of machinery, replete with life and 

 giant power, has displaced the modest loom and the music of the shuttle, still in many a rose- 

 covered cottage by the road-side may still be heard the quiet click, click, of the primitive machine, 

 which yet has a poetry of its own, and in which some most exquisite textile fabrics are still woven 



