102 
CAGE AND SINGING BIRDS. 
for he will delight you with his singing nearly all the year 
round, if bred and reared for that purpose.'' And now it 
will be necessary to say a few words about the method of 
TEACHING TO SING. 
We shall occupy but little space with remarks upon this 
head, as much that might be said will be found in its ap- 
propriate place in the first section of our book. Soon after 
the young canaries are able to feed themselves, they begin 
to twitter , and even at this early period, Bechstein says, 
the male may be distinguished from the female by the more 
connected character of his song. Then is the time to begin 
the course of musical instruction ^ the birds to be taught 
should be put into separate cages of small size, which should 
at first be covered with a linen cloth, and afterwards with 
some thicker substance, so as nearly to exclude the light : 
place them in a room by themselves, as remote as possible 
from all discordant and distracting sounds, let a short air be 
whistled or jJayed to them on a flute, flageolet, or bird- 
organ, five or six times a day, and repeated on each occasion 
about that number of times. Especially in the morning J 
and evening, and at feeding time, should these lessons be 
given : from two to six months is the time required by the 
birds to learn the tune perfectly ; some having better memo- 
ries, and some being more docile and attentive than others. 
Should you wish your birds to acquire the strain of any 
other feathered performer, you must hang him in the room 
with them, and let them hear as little else as may be. A 
well-instructed canary, nightingale, goldfinch, sky or wood 
lark, may be the music-master ; the English taste is in 
favour of the two latter. Tyrol birds are, most frequently, 
taught to introduce the warbling of the second ; and in 
Thuringia, as Bechstein tells us, " the preference is gene- ^ 
rally given to those birds which, instead of a succession of 
noisy bursts, know how, with a silvery sonorous voice, to 
descend regularly through all the notes of the octave, intro- 
ducmg from time to time, a sound like a trumpet." Some 
canaries, in the pairing season, have been known to sing 
with such loudness and vigour as to rupture the blood- 
vessels of the lungs, and fall dead in the midst of their 
song ; at the same season, the hen bird, which is generally 
