Breeding Scotch Fancy Canaries. 233 



strain in a breeding-room, and require some admixture of tlie two to restore it. Contingencies of 

 this kind will not dismay the breeder, since careful selection will soon return either form to its 

 regular channel after such a method of pairing has been found necessary. The inference to be 

 drawn from this is that the breeder who pins his faith to shape alone, and follows promiscuous 

 pairing entirely untrammelled by feather considerations, has the widest field in which to work, and 

 the fewest difficulties to encounter. Clean and Piebald are alike the same to him as to the Belgian 

 breeder. He may have more of the one than the other, and a season's breeding may even find 

 him without a representative of some one particular class with which to do battle at some coming 

 meeting of the Clans ; but on all sides he has a wealth of shape which he values more than any 

 chance form of feather, a thing he considers as merely the expression of a minor canon of his 

 creed, the fundamental doctrines of which are model and action in whatever garb they may be 

 clothed. 



Of the practical management of this variety during the breeding season there is also nothing 

 fresh to say. The custom of the port difters in some trifling details, but it amounts to the 

 same in the end. Our large stacks of breeding-cages are not in vogue, at any rate in the Glasgow 

 circuit. Open wire cages, such as we should at first sight regard as " general purposes " or " flight " 

 cages, each a separate establishment by itself, are in common use ; the nesting-place is attached to 

 the outside, and removed at the close of the season, when the cages which, in a well-ordered room, 

 are of uniform pattern are placed side by side, and being generally of superior design and 

 workmanship, look well, and in their light, airy structure harmonise with the character of 

 the bird. 



It is a usual custom with many breeders to cut the tails of their breeding-stock. When the 

 show-season is over and the birds are relegated to domestic duties, the steering apparatus, being 

 no longer required to form a part of the elegant model or to act as a rudder when the bird is 

 called on to " 'bout ship " and answer its helm with a whisk, is unshipped ; not entirely, but is 

 shortened fully half its length. This partial dismantling of the ship, it need scarcely be explained, 

 is not done without obvious reasons, and finds its parallel in many cases in which a feature 

 developed to excess in obedience to the severe standards of fashion becomes, when no longer 

 required for ornament, a positive inconvenience. 



No more "training" is required for the Scotch Fancy than for the Belgian. It appears 

 to be born with a full consciousness that the chief business of its life is to hop, and it 

 goes to work at an early age; not with that everlasting, characteristic family jump from the 

 perch to the side of the cage, nor a ceaseless click-clack as regular in its beat and as full of 

 music as the melodious tick of an American clock, but with an easy grace befitting its high 

 breeding it begins to practise the regulation hop of seven inches, the distance between the 

 two perches of a Scotch Fancy show-cage, itself a piece of furniture sici generis, of which 

 an illustration is given in Fig. 61. It is oblong in shape, the bottom or body being about 

 15 inches by 5, and is fitted with a seed-box and false bottom, or draw-board. Some 

 exhibitors content themselves with work of the plainest description, by which we mean the 

 absence of characteristic ornamentation, which is sometimes of the most elaborate description of 

 inlaid work. Next to his birds the Scotch fancier prides himself in his cages, many of them 

 being no mean specimens of cabinet-work. The superstructure is slightly arched in the direction 

 of its length, and is either entirely of wire, or the four uprights are of wood for half their 

 height, into which the wires forming the framework are inserted, the whole combining by 

 means of the most finished workmanship a maximum of strength with the extreme of 

 lightness. A sliding door at the end is the usual arrangement, though some have the 

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