German So.vg Canaries. 293 



to depart in the crowd, and their work in keeping up the strain is lost. Still further, the 

 difficulty of getting really good birds has made the dealers who supply Germany much more 

 particular, so that very few but second or third-rate ones now find their way to England, 

 the Germans being much greater connoisseurs in Canary song, and willing to pay higher 

 prices for such birds as please them. Thus, a great Berlin dealer will purchase, say, a hundred 

 birds of one known breeder at 9s. or los. a head wholesale ; these he sorts and tests at leisure, 

 selling at various prices according to the quality of the song, and obtaining for one or two of the 

 best as much as £^ each. Few English buyers would dream of such a price, and the English 

 market, therefore, fails to attract the better class of birds ; such as do reach our shores being in 

 almost every case brought over after private selection. It is not meant that many good songsters 

 may not be found in England ; but the highest German standard is very high. It has been, for 

 instance, estimated by experts that amongst the 30,000 or more young cocks bred every year at 

 St. Andreasberg, only forty or fifty stand in the very first class ; and one of the most celebrated 

 breeders in that town, Herr Trute, whilst selling a hundred birds to one Berlin dealer at 9s. per 

 head, sold to the same dealer his best single birds — selected by himself— at 30s. to £3 each. 

 What the dealer would sell the best of these for in Berlin can only be guessed. 



There are supposed to be about four hundred families who breed Song Canaries in the one 

 town of St. Andreasberg, and the money value of the trade to the town was estimated a few years 

 since at ;^9,000 per annum. Only ten per cent, of the whole stock, however, have any reputation 

 for qualities valued by the connoisseur, which obviously demand certain natural gifts, including 

 a musical ear, to keep up. Good breeders make a tolerably certain but very moderate profit, and 

 it is obviously a labour of love as much as a commercial undertaking. From a return given by a 

 breeder of repute — Herr Maschke — to Herr Brandner, of Stettin, it appears that out of a hundred 

 Canaries he sold the great bulk at I2s. to i8s. each, one or two at 30s. and 6qs., and some at 

 lower prices; and that, after calculating all expenses, his profit was about ^^ 12 on the hundred 

 birds. This seems a very moderate return for the assiduous training, as well as care and attention 

 required. In fact, few people have any idea of the amount of education a trained German Song 

 Canary has gone through. The object is to get certain combinations of trills or modulated 

 melody, with deep flute-like tones ; and excellence consists, not in loudness or length of song, or 

 even quality of mere voice, so much as in a continuous repetition of certain varied strains. Loud 

 notes between these are not regarded as meritorious, but as decided faults, as are most short 

 detached notes, hovv'ever soft ; and even the well-known nightingale notes are less valued than 

 certain trills or passages of melody. Some birds have a compass of four octaves, and will execute 

 various shakes in the most perfect style ; but it is always desired that a bird, whatever strains it 

 has mastered — and few good songsters have less than three or four — should end its song by a 

 succession of soft, flute-like, descending tones. The most prized melodies are seldom, learnt by 

 a young bird in less than six months, and only by quiet birds; the more excitable ones bursting 

 into those detached, powerful notes, which are held to impair the song. Of course it requires 

 a very "correct ear and immense experience to select the better performers ; for only a few of the 

 very choicest birds are ever tried separately, and the immense majority are picked out of a general 

 chorus which would be distracting to a stranger. 



The magnitude of the trade in German Canaries testifies of itself to an immense mortality, 

 and this is the fact. There are several reasons for it. In the first place, the competition has led 

 breeders to employ artificial warmth to hasten nesting; and Harz Canaries are now bred in a 

 temperature ranging from 6^^ to 72°, and even higher. It is inevitable that the respiratory 

 organs should become very delicate, and that when they are removed to a damper climate and 



