Scotch Fancy Canaries. 229 



Classification of Scotch Fancy Canaries. 

 Cocks. Hens. 



(a) Clean Yellow. {b) Clean Yellow. 



(c) Clean Buff. (d) Clean Buff. 



(i) Foul-feathered Yellow. (/) Foul-feathered Yellow, 



{g) Foul-feathered Buff. (Ji) Foul-feathered Buff. 



(/) Piebald Yellow. (7) Piebald Yellow. 



(k) Piebald Buff (/) Piebald Buff. 



(in) Yellow Green. («) Yellow Green. 



{0) Buff Green. (/) Buff Green. 



Tn all, sixteen separate and distinct classes, which, in the Glasgow schedules, are lettered 

 as above. 



The "Clean" or, as we are accustomed to call them, "Clear" classes require no remark 

 other than to notice that in adopting the word " Clean " it is not meant to convey a distinction 

 without a difference, but applies to the external feather only, while the English term is 

 understood to refer to every part of the feather, whether stalk, flue, or web, and is essentially 

 an expression pregnant with meaning in its relation to colour. A " Clean " bird need not 

 necessarily be " Clear," and in cases where external purity only is required, without reference to 

 the strength of the outward colour, it is usual to employ the former term as implying freedom 

 from external blemish, rather than the latter, which expresses so much more. We might, 

 perhaps, have more correctly applied the term " Clean " to classes a, b, c, and d, in our Belgian 

 classification, but this explanation will serve to show the true meaning of the terms, which, 

 nevertheless, are sometimes inadvertently used to express the same idea. 



The " Foul-feathered " birds correspond exactly with our bona fide Ticked examples. We 

 retract the exactly : a tick, however small, will qualify, but very lightly-variegated specimens 

 are also admissible, e.g., such as are slightly marked on the wing or head, but are clear of body- 

 marks. This Foul-feathered class appears to us to be nothing more than a connecting link 

 between Clean and Piebald, and we do not see clearly why, if marking counts absolutely 

 nothing, there should be so many distinctions in degree. Why not include the Foul-marked with 

 the Piebald, if " model and action " determine the intrinsic worth } It is not our province in this 

 place to dictate : we only describe things as we find them, but this is our English view. When 

 the Millennium arrives, and Celt, Anglo-Saxon, and Teuton all show on one stage, perhaps 

 some friendly Congress will have settled this and other questions on a mutually satisfactory basis. 



The " Piebald " section answers to our Heavily-variegated, but the marking on the saddle 

 should be no more than a horse-shoe. In no class is any provision whatever made for technical 

 marking, a feature as entirely ignored as among Belgians. It will be observed that our Scotch 

 friends do recognise and arrange in a most extended plan every departure from the clean type 

 except technical marking, in which respect they differ as widely from the admirers of form on 

 the Continent, who repudiate all marking, as they do from us in repudiating the one form which 

 we have come to regard as the highest type of beauty. But so it is, and probably the three 

 Canary-breeding nationalities will each ever "gang its ain gait." If we wish to show Evenly- 

 marked Scotch Fancies we shall have them to make, the same as in the Belgians, and from a 

 very scanty supply of material too, since in the Glasgow show of 1876, among no less than 

 two hundred and four Piebald birds of every form, including the Foul-feathered, where "marking" 

 was most likely to be found, only one had the slightest pretensions to the property. 



