MATERIALS FOR NEST-BUILDING. 



07 



HARTZ NEST. 



mutually pilfering the building material already collected. 

 The back part of the cage, which is placed immediately 

 against the wall, may be without a railing, so as to facilitate 

 the removal of rotten eggs and dead 

 young birds. A precisely similar ar- 

 rangement is made in the Hartz cages, 

 where the nests are disposed. Accord- 

 ing to Breymann, the best nests for 

 Dutch canaries are small boxes, open 

 in front, and roofed with a network 

 of wide meshes ; these boxes should be 

 about 5 to 6 inches deep and wide, 

 and firstly half-filled with boiled, and 

 then carefully dried, hay. 



Two nests, at least, must be provided for each female, 

 for most of them begin to build and to lay again after a 

 fortnight,, even if the first young are not yet quite fledged. 

 After each completed or abortive brood, the nest, as well as 

 the box or cage, must be carefully scalded out with boiling 

 water, and then as carefully dried — the building materials 

 being burnt. All young and old birds being greatly 

 tormented by vermin, such as mites, bugs, moths, etc., if 

 one does not carefully prevent it, everyone should use the 

 best Persian insect-powder obtainable at a chemist's or drug- 

 gist's shop, which should be used unsparingly, and it should 

 be strewed abundantly between the seams in the crevices, 

 and walls of the nesting-boxes, cages, etc., and it should 

 likewise be blown upon the walls where the latter are 

 suspended. 



Materials for Nest-building.— Flexible hay-stalks, 



hogs-bristles, soft, filmy moss, short flakes of cotton, fringed- 

 out linen-threads, 1 inch long, and feathers, are generally 

 given for that purpose. Loose cotton, tufts of wool, and 

 "charpie" threads should never be used for building, for, 



