Our  Canaries 
we  may  for  want  of  a  better  term  call  the  cold  treatment,  simply  for  the  thing's 
sake,  or  to  try  to  discover  what  degree  of  severity  they  could  stand  without 
yielding  up  the  cloak  of  mortality.  The  result  in  all  such  cases  is  practically 
certain  to  prove  disastrous  in  a  greater  or  less  percentage  of  cases,  accordmg  to 
the  antecedents  of  the  birds  experimented  upon. 
THE  VALUE   OF  EXERCISE. 
Before  embarking  in  Canary-keeping  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that  one 
should  take  the  necessary  steps  to  learn  as  far  as  possible  under  what  influences 
the  stock  they  purpose  taking  up  has  been  bred  and  kept  prior  to  the  time  of 
coming  into  their  possession.    If  the  conveniences  at  one's  disposal,  or  one's  own 
inclination,  lean  towards  keeping  stock  under  cold  or  normal  treatment,  care 
should  be  taken  to  begin  only  with  birds  whose  breeding  has  inured  them  to  this 
form  of  treatment.    Then,  and  then  only,  is  the  cold  treatment  likely  to  prove  a 
success  from  the  beginning.    On  the  other  hand,  if  the  birds  have  been  kept 
under  artificial  conditions,  never  below  a  certain  comfortable  degree  of  warmth, 
year  in,  year  out,  their  bodies  have  lost  much  of  their  powers  of  accommodating 
themselves  to  changes  from  heat  to  cold,  and  viu  versa,  and  when  they  come  to  be 
subjected  to  all  the  vagaries  and  rapid  fluctuations  of  an  English  Spring  and 
Winter  they  almost  invariably  succumb  to  the  strain,  becoming  in  a  few  months 
wheezy,  bronchial  invalids,  doomed  to  drag  out  the  rest  of  their  lives  in  constant 
misery,  which  is  too  often  prolonged  to  a  painful  degree,  useless  for  all  practical 
purposes,  and  a  living  warning  and  disappointment  to  the  owner.    Such  are  the 
birds  which  earn  for  fancy  Canaries  generally  the  unenviable  reputation  of  being 
delicate  in  constitution  and  difficult  to  manage,  whereas  they  are,  in  reality, 
monuments  to  lack  of  discretion  or  misplaced  zeal  on  the  part  of  the  owner. 
Given  proper  treatment,  such  birds  might  have  become  healthy  and  thriving 
specimens  under  normal  temperatures.    But  the  change  cannot  be  brought  about 
in  a  day.    It  requires  time  and  a  similar  process  of  acclimatisation  as  is  given  to 
delicate  exotic  species  when  first  imported.    By  adopting  these  precautions  with 
such  specimens  as  require  it,  until  the  whole  economy  of  the  vital  machine  is 
restored  to  healthy  operation,  it  will  be  found  that  no  ordinary  amount  of  cold 
will  affect  them  injuriously.    Cold  of  itself,  and  provided  it  is  accompanied  by 
pure  air  and  free  from  draughts  or  damp  rarely,  if  ever,  kills— that  it  may,  and 
does,  tend  to  heal  and  increase  length  of  life,  our  modern  method  of  fighting 
disease,  and  notably  Consumption,  by  means  of  open-air  treatment,  and  the 
success  attending  it,  is  an  eloquent  proof. 
A  sufficiency  of  space  to  allow  the  birds  to  take  plenty  of  vigorous  exercise  is 
of  far  greater  importance  as  a  means  of  maintaining  or  increasing  the  heat  of  the 
animal  body,  than  any  artificial  means  of  raising  the  external  heat  could  possibly 
be.    Activity,  as  must  be  patent  to  any  thinking  mind,  may  indeed  be  regarded  as 
