NOTES ON THE BRITISH BIRDS AT THE

CRYSTAL PALACE.


By J. Lewis Bonhote.


Owing to having been away from England it is three years

since I last wrote on these classes, and I was consequently rather

anxious to see whether, during that time, any improvement had

taken place in either the management of the Show or the judging,

and to a certain extent I was agreeably surprised, the classification

and division of the classes is carried on in a far more reasonable

manner, with the result that judging is easier and the number of

birds wrong-classed considerably smaller. The same pecularities

(see Avi. Mag. II. p. 65, and III p. 84) or other similar ones,

enabled the cages of certain exhibitors to be picked out what¬

ever class they might be in and this will always be possible, and

to some extent unavoidable as long as exhibitors are not bound

down to have cages of certain fixed sizes and shapes. Another

point which is, I think, not recognized is that Shows of wild

birds (British and Foreign) must of necessity be judged on quite

different lines from other exhibits, and that a Show of wild

birds should be rather an exhibition of wild birds enjoying an

existence of confinement than long series of Bullfinches, Gold¬

finches and such birds judged b} r an imaginary ideal created in

the judge’s brain and probably bearing but little resemblance to

the wild bird which one sees in a country ramble.


With Canaries, Pigeons and Fowls, etc., the case is quite

different; there the Club of any particular variety draws up its

standard b}^ which the birds are judged and the prize is awarded

to the fancier who most nearly succeeds in breeding his bird like

the ideal; but in wild birds there is no fixed ideal, each judge

forming his own, and it becomes a mere matter of chance

whether you are the possessor of a bird approaching the judge’s

ideal. In my opinion, however, prizes in the Wild Bird classes

should be given almost entirely for the keeping in good condition

of rare species, or of species difficult to manage in confinement,

so that where, in the one case a man gets the prize for making the

law 7 s of natural selection subservient to his own, on the other

hand he would get it for imitating Nature’s food and surround¬

ings so satisfactorily as to enable birds to live and enjoy confine¬

ment ; a pleasure to themselves and their keepers. I11 this

respect, and in this respect only, are Shows connected with

the study of aviculture, and consequently year by year the

Crystal Palace Show is noticed in these columns.



