14 



tearing feathers out of each others bodies. This vice seems ex- 

 ceptionally prevalent in this country, the only one in which I find 

 the breeding cages constructed with a separate compartment in 

 which to save the fledglings from being stripped by the old birds. 

 Complaints of their plucking feathers out of each other, or out of 

 their defenceless progeny, are here numerous and constant wherever 

 Canaries are kept together, and it is much to be regretted that the 

 evil has not been traced to its cause and vanquished. 



Generally the evil begins at the approach of the breeding season. 

 Birds who have never sinned before, instinctively look then for 

 suitable building material. The selected pairs are matched, and 

 meet in the confined space of the breeding cage. Not finding any- 

 thing quite to his liking, the male seizes the first opportunity of 

 extracting perhaps only one feather out of the flank of his little 

 spouse, and carries it all over the cage as if to show her what he 

 considers the best material to build a nest with. She picks up the 

 feather in her turn and very soon has procured some more at the 

 expense of her amorous lord. In a short time she acquires a morbid 

 craving for the taste of the blood-warm quill and becomes a confirmed 

 despoiler of her species. 



She would build her nest entirely of down, if able to lay under 

 contribution enough birds other than herself, and would, if not 

 prevented, eventually strip her first brood naked in order to obtain 

 material for her second nest. 



Very few German breeders are ever troubled with such evil-doers, 

 nor with another class of offenders very common over here, viz. : 

 those hens that sit so closely on their naked brood that they become 

 saturated with her perspiration, weak in consequence, and unable to 

 raise their heads should they be called upon to do so by the male 

 parent, which the mother rarely allows, and ultimately they perish. 

 This is called "sweating" the young prior to starving them. 

 Immunity from these troubles is ascribed mainly to the use of the 

 correct nesting stuff. 



In Germany they employ nothing but 



SHREDDED LINEN 



threads made from old but clean linen rags, called both in German. 



