THE



345



Bvtcultural /llbagastne,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURA L SOCIETY.



New Series —VOL. IV.— NO. 12 .—All rights reserved. OCTOBER, 1906.



NOTES ON HYBRID PLOCEID/E.


By Arthur G. Butler, Ph.D., F.B.S., F.Z.S., etc.


To breed the familiar hybrids between a British finch and

a Canary seems to me to be a pastime utterly devoid of interest:

compared with the hybridization of foreign birds, it is by no

means difficult; but one always knows, when one puts the birds

together, almost exactly what the hybrids will be like. The

hybrids hitherto produced between British finches are almost

equally uninteresting, on account of our familiarity with them

on the show-bench ; and although it is possible that a scientific

study of them might throw some light on the past, I believe

no attempt has hitherto been made to study and compare their

characters from a scientific standpoint.


When one essays to cross the various Ploceid finches there

is far more to hope for : as a rule one does not know in the least

what will be the result of the union, and consequently the

interest in the intermarriage is considerable; but, to breed

hybrid Ploceidce to order is by no means easy: one may pair up

opposite sexes of two species and keep them together in a

spacious flight-cage for years, but it is about a hundred to one

that they will take no notice of one another, excepting to dis¬

pute over food or a roostiug-place for the night.


I have tried numbers of assorted species together in cages,

and the only success I ever had with these birds was in crossing

the Sharp-tailed finch and Bengalee; two species so closely

related that the late Dr. Russ considered them doubtfully dis¬

tinct ; though the specific characters which distinguish Uroloncka

acuticauda and U. striata are far better defined than those of

many other species.



