ar.S 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



THE YORKSHIRE CANARY. 



In pursuing tlie scheme we laid down for the convenient grouping of the various members of 

 the Canary family, we must now deal with the popular representative of the county of three 

 Ridings, a bird belonging essentially to the section now under discussion. It is of ancient 

 date, and has for many generations found a home in Yorkshire, where it is still the bird of the 

 many, being as highly valued and as carefully bred as are other distinctive varieties elsewhere. 

 We will not attempt to gainsay that great alteration in style has taken place of late years 

 with respect to this bird, and possibly the Yorkshire of to-day is not precisely the same bird 

 as the Yorkshire of fifty years ago ; but while other varieties to which we have directed attention 

 have been bred, some locally, and others over a wider area, there has always been a bird of 

 eminently distinctive character, a long, slim, straight, erect Canary, identified with the Yorkshire 

 fanciers to such an extent as to be known by the name of the county where it has been 

 cultivated, and which has been handed down to them with its traditions through a long succession 

 of breeders all devoted to its interests. Regarded from this point of view, the Yorkshire has as 

 much right to be considered a pure breed as any other, and no doubt the original strain of birds 

 of which we still hear the old fanciers speak — and some of them can recall the time when the 

 present century was very young — was as free from taint of alien admixture as any of the other 

 varieties whose history we have endeavoured to investigate. Looking at the modern Yorkshire 

 as he stands in the show-cage in 1878, we are constrained to say that we find in him stronger 

 evidence of, not one cross but many, than we do of a carefully worked-out modification or 

 adaptation of one particular form, such as we recognise in the Scotch Fancy in its relation to 

 the Belgian ; and in this respect the Yorkshire, or at all events the modern stylish Yorkshire, 

 must be regarded as a somewhat mixed breed, not more so, probably, after all, than sundry other 

 fashionable fancies in which such rapid strides have been made to satisfy the requirements of 

 a fastidious modern standard that much of the original character has been lost amid not 

 a little disputing as to what is the genuine type. VVe need not point to examples of this ; 

 they abound on every hand in every department of live stock. It is in a qualified sense, 

 then, that we use the expression " mixed breed," and do not mean to imply that the 

 Yorkshire Canary can be compounded out of raw material in a year. Too much may have 

 been attempted at once and in too many directions at the same time with the view of 

 improving the bird, which has come to the front with an unmistakable "rush" during the 

 last few years, but it will be found that those who have turned out the best specimens are a 

 class of men who, setting themselves to do a certain thing, carefully think it out and do it, 

 selecting their material, building, shoring and propping up the edifice, leaving nothing wanting 

 and no one point exaggerated at the expense of something else. 



If we were required to find a history for this bird we think we should not be far from the 

 truth if we were to say that it probably owes its origin to the fact that in both Lancashire and 

 Yorkshire there have been for no one knows how loncj two varieties of Canaries of the erect school. 



