DEMAND AND SUPPLY, 



47 



young birds, however, take the red colour in an equal 

 measure. It is, on the contrary, necessary that the colour- 

 ing matter should already, as breeders express it, "lie in 

 the blood." In England, all sorts of artifices are, more- 

 over, employed, all seeds are occasionally withheld, and they 

 are fed on the pepper mixture only ; they are also somehow 

 sewn up in cotton. Taken as a whole, the English colour- 

 canaries find little favour on the Continent ; it is only the 

 Norwich bird, of a pure, dark pepper-red, that has attained 

 to a certain degree of popularity. At all events it may be 

 considered as very interesting, the production of really 

 handsome colour-canaries, for handsome they undoubtedly 

 are. 



Demand and Supply.— It is well known, that, in 

 Germany, canaries are bred in exceedingly large numbers 

 for the London market, and also, that considerable and 

 ever increasing quantities of them are already being exported 

 to other foreign countries. Although it is difficult to state 

 fixed numbers without a reliable authority, yet we will 

 not be far from the truth in asserting that, in the whole of 

 Germany, from 450,000 to 600,000 canaries are being 

 annually bred at the present time ; 50,000 of these are said 

 to come from the province of Hanover alone, 1 and, naturally, 

 a great many more from the Hartz; next comes Thuringia, 

 then follow different other parts of Germany, as, for instance, 

 the city of Berlin, further, Belgium and Switzerland rank 

 more or less high in the production of canaries. 



The greatest exporter is in Germany the wholesale- 

 dealer, C. Reiche of Alfeld, near Hanover, whose mode of 

 doing business is described in the appendix ; besides a few 

 other wholesale dealers, who likewise export to North and 

 South America, England and Russia, as well as to other 



St, Andreasberg, alone, breeds and exports 40,000 to 50,000 males. 



