80 
CAGE AND SINGING BrRDS. 
both the beauty and docihty of the former ; in the place of 
the brilliant red which renders the male bullfinch so conspi- 
cuous a bird^ they have but a dull reddish gray ; they are 
smaller of size, too, and altogether less attractive. 
You must begin to whistle to young bullfinches the tunes 
you wish them to learn, as soon as they are taken, for al- 
though they do not begin to pipe until they are able to feed 
themselves, yet they will be storing up the notes in their 
memory. Recollect, too, that the lessons should be given 
immediately after they have been fed, for if at all hungry 
they will not pay any attention to the " voice of the 
charmer, charm he never so wisely." Bechstein says, that 
the course of instruction must be continued for three quarters 
of a year, or the lessons will not make a sufficiently deep and 
jasting ifnpression ; there will, by and by, be a confusion of 
different airs, a transposition of notes, or, it may be, that at 
the moulting season the whole will be forgotten, except some 
floating and shifting disjecta memhra of a tune, which the 
bird were better without. Those patient, plodding people, 
the Germans, take immense pains in the instruction of bull- 
finches. Dr. Stanley has given an account of their semina- 
ries, where, it appears, the birds are divided into classes of 
about six pupils ; food and music are administered t -gether, 
so that the associations are naturally pleasant ones; the 
birds are kept much in the dark, until they begin to repeat 
a few notes of the strain whistled to them, that their atten- 
tion may not be diverted ; by degrees, as they learn, so light 
is admitted to them, and each bird, as it becomes sufficiently 
advanced in its education, is taken out of its class, and placed 
singly, under the care of a boy, whose duty it is to grind 
away on his bird organ, from morning till night, the parti- 
cular airs in which the bird is to become a proficient. In 
some of these bullfinch schools a starving system is adopted : 
the teachers go upon the principle of no song, no supper," 
and give their pupils food and light as a reward for singing, 
and not as an incitement to sing* : we know not which plan 
succeeds best, but would rather advocate the first. There 
are some very accomplished bullfinches that will whistle, or 
pipe, as it is called, three distinct airs, and these fetch high 
prices — several pounds have been given for such 5 generally, 
however, a single tune, with a short prelude, is as much as 
