8 
Our  Canaries 
At  this  time  Nuremberg  alone  is  said  to  have  produced  for  sale  no  fewer 
than  8000  birds  per  annum.  But  this  trade  was  practically  destroyed  by 
the  wars  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
resuscitated  until  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  during  this  interval 
the  people  of  the  Hartz  Mountains  captured  the  trade,  gave  the  name  of  the 
locality  to  the  bright  and  cheerful  little  songster,  and  Nuremberg  and  its  pioneer 
efforts  was  almost  entirely  forgotten,  whilst  the  Hartz  Mountains  were,  until 
quite  recent  times,  made  famous  all  over  the  world  by  the  association  of  the 
name  of  the  district  with  the  Hartz  Mountain  Roller  canary — a  name  by 
which  for  many  years  the  bird  was  universally  known  until  stress  of  modern 
trade  competition  gradually,  but  surely,  brought  into  vogue  a  multiplicity  of 
popular  titles  for  our  musical  little  parlour  pet. 
GREY    AND  GREEN. 
But  to  bring  the  ancient  history  down  so  far  as  we  can  trace  records  of  it 
from  the  time  of  Bithincourt's  introduction,  we  next  find  an  early  writer,  one 
Turner,  in  1544  speaking  of  birds  "which  the  English  call  'canaries,'"  and 
remarking  that,  "  what  some  call  *  grey '  others  call  '  green  ;  '  besides  which 
there  are  difficulties  of  interpretation  from  one  language  to  another,  besides 
distinctions  in  tone  of  colour  appertaining- to  sex,  for  what  might  be  bright  and 
green  in  a  cock  might  be  dull  and  grey  in  his  sister." 
Next  Gesner  in  1585;  Aldrovandus  in  1610 ;  and  Willughby  in  his 
posthumous  work  on  the  "  History  of  Birds,"  published  in  1667  ;  all  give  a 
more  or  less  detailed  account  of  the  bird,  and  the  last-named  author  besides 
giving  a  detailed  and  critical  description  of  the  canary,  connects  it  distinctly 
with  the  place  of  its  supposed  origin,  and  also  recounts  the  story  of  their  chance 
introduction  into  the  Isle  of  Elba  from  a  vessel  which  was  wrecked  off  the  coast 
of  that  island  on  its  passage  from  the  Canary  Islands  to  Leghorn.  Although 
some  doubt  has  been  cast  upon  the  truth  of  this  narrative  in  recent  times,  it  i& 
clear  from  Willughby's  record  that  the  story  was  a  generally  accepted  and 
popular  one  more  than  two-and-a-half  centuries  ago  even  as  it  is  to-day. 
Coming  down  to  the  eighteenth  century  we  now  begin  to  find  tracings 
of  the  domestic  canary  from  its  original  wild  stock  (real  or  fabulous  will 
probably  never  be  known)  of  the  Canary  Isles,  together  with  descriptions  of  its 
variations  in  a  state  of  domesticity.  The  writings  of  Albin,  Brisson,  Buffon^ 
and  Adanson,  all  contain  such  accounts  of  the  birds,  and  the  latter  author 
tells  us  that  "  the  Canary  Serin,  which  becomes  quite  white  in  France,  is,  in 
Teneriffe,  almost  as  deep  a  grey  as  the  Linnet."  From  this  record  it  would 
appear  that  the  "  White  Canary  "  which  made  a  stir  at  the  Crystal  Palace  Show 
of  1909  is,  after  all,  by  no  means  the  first  of  its  kind. 
