144 Caxaries and Cage-Birds. 



don't say its laws are never broken by the unscrupulous; but nothing is allowed, or recognised, or 

 understood, in the sense of " they all do it," to make a bird appear what it is not; and the wretched 

 sophistry which argues that a bird must be good to begin with, to bear "making" — the fertile cause 

 of deception and fraud among poultry and pigeon fanciers — has no rest for the sole of its foot in the 

 Canary and cage-bird show-room. Some reader may ask, smiling, "How about Cayenne feeding?" 

 To answer the question is, perhaps, to admit its reasonableness : our reply is, that it neither adds 

 to nor substracts from, mechanically, but develops naturally, and shows what a bird is. 



Concluding our remarks on Variegation, we observe that another common and very vexatious 

 form is the presence of a white feather in the wings or tail — a defect which, as an item of breeding 

 information, it is much more difficult to eliminate than mere body ticks. 



The Evenly-marked birds are judged in precisely the same way as in the Norwich variety, 

 due regard being had for the richness of the Cinnamon marking, and extreme care being required 

 to detect any small ticks, which are not so discernible on the deep orange ground as are the green 

 feathers in other varieties. 



Evenly-marked Cinnamons of the Norwich type are as yet entirely in their infancy, and we do 

 not remember ever having seen a class set apart for them ; indeed, we question whether there are 

 enough birds of the kind in the country to make a respectable show, even if Yellows and Buffs were 

 grouped, those claiming to be evenly-marked being found either in the comprehensive Variegated 

 division or among the evenly-marked specimens exhibited as such without regard to their being 

 Colour, Shape, or Position birds. This is one of the anomalies of our cut-and-dried system of 

 show-classification, and yet, at the same time, an arrangement which can scarcely be prevented 

 when it is remembered that there are not many of either of the three types, and that, until each is 

 more extensively bred, financial considerations compel them to be so grouped and judged for one 

 common property, viz., even-marking, although each has a separate and distinct property, apart 

 from the marking, for which it has been especially bred. The bringing of birds having dissimilar 

 properties into competition in the same class is defensible only as a matter of policy. It is an 

 Incontrovertible axiom that it is impossible to compare unlike things. We may compare colour 

 with colour, size with size, shape with shape, position with position, or any like with its equivalent ; 

 but when we endeavour to institute a comparison between colour and shape, or any other 

 dissimilars, we attempt an impossibility, and the result is an absurdity out of which springs as 

 much unpleasantness as is possible to be born of such a Babel of confusion of ideas. 



The few Evenly-marked Norwich Cinnamons which have from time to time appeared, 

 doubtless, to a great extent chance productions, have been birds possessed of beauty enough, one 

 would have thought, to fire the enthusiasm of the most unimpressible fancier ; but the bird has as 

 yet failed to take any great hold of the show world, and up to the present time we have seen but 

 little indication of its occupying the prominent position it might. With all the lustrous beauty of 

 the clear plumage of the Norwich bird, it has a softness and delicacy peculiarly its own. Granted 

 that the contrast between green and gold is more striking than between chocolate and gold, and 

 that the dark pencilling of a Norwich eye is more effective than the softer auburn; but it is in the 

 quiet, soft expression that the beauty consists. The marked Buffs have a chaste refinement about 

 them that cannot be gainsaid. Whether it arise from the admixture of the Cinnamon blood, 

 bringing with it a softness and peculiar tone in the colour of the clear portion of the plumage, or 

 from some other cause, we know not ; but there is that about the texture and colour of the Buff 

 v/hich is found nowhere else, and this beautiful quality is so patent that even in the case of an 

 almost perfectly clear pink-eyed bird, or one having so few cinnamon feathers that they require to 

 be sought for to satisfy one as to their existence, there is no difficulty in at once determining 



