ORDER PASSERES. 287 



piercing voice and greater breadth than the pure species. They 

 also live longer, if not employed in attempts to propagate. 

 It is pretended, that those bastard birds which come from 

 the mixture of canaries with siskins, goldfinches, &c. are 

 not sterile mules, but fertile mongrels, which can unite and 

 produce not only with their paternal and maternal races, but 

 also with each other, and give birth to fruitful individuals, 

 the varieties of which may also mingle and be perpetuated. 

 Sprenger assures us, after many observations, of the truth 

 of this assertion. It is also the opinion of Hervieux, who 

 has seen the father, the mother, and the young of this second 

 race ; and he tells us that " nature never produced any 

 thing so fine in this kind." It would appear that this pro- 

 duction, if real, depends on many circumstances, which it is 

 impossible to ascertain, and still more so to point out pre- 

 cisely. M. Vieillot tried experiments in this way, and used 

 every possible means, for more than twenty years, without 

 success. He also consulted in Paris a great number of 

 amateurs, and of bird-dealers, who might be relied on, who 

 sell every year a great number of mules from the goldfinch 

 and hen canary, either born in Paris, or brought from 

 Amiens, where the handsomest are bred; and all certified 

 that these mules were unfruitful, and that they never knew 

 an example of the contrary, in spite of the reiterated 

 attempts which they had made every year, but to no pur- 

 pose, to produce one. The male mule will, it is true, couple 

 with the hen canary, and vice versa, and also bestow all the 

 necessary attentions ; but nothing but barren eggs is the con- 

 sequence. The result is similar from the junction of the 

 mules themselves, and it is the same with those which pro- 

 ceed from the linnet, the siskin, the greenfinch, and the 

 bullfinch, and the same remark may be applied to birds of 

 every other order, genus, and species. It is the same with 

 the mules of the white or collared turtle dove and the 



