41 



given, the awards, even at the larger contests, consisting usually of 

 "First Prizes" of ten shillings, "Second Prizes" of five shillings, 

 and " Third Prizes " carrying no money, but only an elaborate card, 

 which has been produced at considerable cost, and which forms a 

 desirable ornament in the bird room. An anomaly is that this 

 "Third Prize" is called a "Diploma," which is as much a misnomer 

 as the term " First Prize " applied to a bird which has many compeers 

 at the same show, all of which earn simultaneously an equivalent 

 distinction. 



A judge at German song contests requires above all his other 

 qualifications an almost inexhaustible fund of patience, as, although 

 the birds are trained to sing to command, many of them prove to his 

 experienced ear that they are not producing their choicest notes at 

 the " first time of asking," and may require to be heard two or three 

 times before they will have displayed their full quality. 



A knowledge and appreciation of the many difficulties to be 

 mastered by the hard w r orking breeder, before success is reached, is 

 an almost indispensable necessity. Ths best judges, therefore, are 

 erstwhile breeders, who have made a name for themselves by their 

 successes at the largest meetings, and are content to relinquish 

 breeding for the less profitable but honored task of judging. Such 

 a man can never forget or dismiss from his mind the numberless 

 vicissitudes attendant upon the pursuit of the fancy ; and that he is 

 possessed of the virtue of patience, to which I have pointed as a 

 first necessity of his new position, goes entirely without saying, for 

 without it, whether in Germany, or any other country, it would have 

 been quite impossible for him, or indeed any fancier, to have reached 

 the goal to which his attentions were at the outset directed. His 

 knowledge of the difficulties to be overcome will have been slowly 

 but surely enlarged during his years of probation with their ceaseless 

 endeavours to produce a team that would become prominent on 

 the show-bench, and he will, without much doubt, have had at 

 least once to submit, after working uphill for years, to polite 

 intimation that the whole team sang " spitz," i.e., that they had too 

 many notes that had overstepped the limits of altitude, and had 

 become earsplitters, the soughing Zephyr (in German Wispel) tour is 

 very productive of this defect ; further, he may recollect the day when 



