178 Canaries and Cage-Birds. 



from ticks or foul feathers of any description. These may disappear in the moult, but occasionally 

 are not so easily disposed of. The flights and tail-feathers, we have said, should be black, or as 

 nearly approaching black as possible. A white feather here is a fatal blemish, and at once 

 cancels all hopes of future greatness ; but if there be but the faintest trace of grey in any part 

 of it, shaft or web, it does not disqualify. Here the parallel between the show requisites 

 of the London Fancy and Lizard will be seen, and also how identical are the essentials of 

 either bird. 



In the adult bird the body-colour is of the richest hue. It is seen in the richest profusion on 

 the crown, as is usual with colour-birds ; and in all the old standards, some of which, however, 

 are very hazy and unintelligible, considerable weight is attached to "purity and richness" as 

 displayed in this place. Throughout the entire bird, and notably on the breast, deep golden 

 orange should prevail. We make no separate mention of the Buff form, because we take it that its 

 characteristic features are familiar to the reader and thoroughly understood in every point, and it 

 will be unnecessary to say more than that it exists in the London Fancy, as in other varieties, 

 in all its attractive beauty. If it possess any one feature peculiar to itself, it is a 

 mellowness and absence of the harshness sometimes observable in certain schools of overgrown 

 Norwich, though there is little or no difference between buff in the London F"ancy and its 

 development in the purest type of the Norwich bird. In the old days of the plain feeding, this 

 Canary was as deep in colour as anything on the show-stage, and, in a good specimen, was not 

 surpassed by the warmest tones of the best examples of the Norwich variety, with which, indeed, 

 we have known it to be crossed with a view to the improvement of colour, and with the best 

 results. We did not refer to this cross in its place, simply because the bird is so very scarce as 

 seldom or never to be used for the purpose, while its ally and probable blood-relation is occasionally 

 selected with good effect. The authority before quoted, Mr. Brodrick, of Chudleigh, Devon, 

 writes us : — " I almost wondered, when speaking of the use of Lizards in producing high colour 

 in the Norwich birds, that you did not refer to the same use of the London Fancy strain. This I 

 myself believe to be the true origin of good colour. I have tried it often, and can produce clear 

 high-coloured birds in the second generation from a London Fancy cock and a clear hen." We 

 insert this here as bearing on the fact of the rich tone of colour we say belongs to this bird, but 

 we cannot endorse the opinion that it is the true origin of good colour in the direction referred 

 to, because hundreds of Norwich breeders have never even seen the bird. 



The show plumage of the adult specimen should exhibit no trace of its dusky first- 

 feather garb, though very frequently a decent approximation to this has to suffice. There is 

 an appreciable difference in the quality of birds in this respect, some of the richest forms of 

 colour being very unwilling to part with every dark feather, and, as the variety now stands, 

 the clearest are not always the richest in tone. We think this a natural consequence, and an 

 illustration of our original colour theory, rather than the result of a careless system of breeding, or 

 an evidence of deterioration from the in-breeding to a great extent rendered obligatory by the 

 limited amount of material at command. Referring to this propensity to retain something of its 

 dark feather, Mr. Brodrick says in one of his communications to us: — "When I first obtained 

 them in 1842 there was not a bird to be seen free from ticks or spangles ; now numbers of them 

 are quite spotless. I was, unfortunately, obliged last year to introduce fresh blood into my 

 old strain, and that has thrown them somewhat back. Before this was done I bred as many 

 as ninety young birds with only tivo foul feathers amongst them, and the large majority of 

 them quite free from ticks." A valuable testimony to the truth of the principles of pedigree 

 breeding. 



