Our  Canaries 
69 
be  bought  cheaply,  and  with  a  Httle  ingenuity  pieced  together.  When  finished 
cover  neatly  with  tar  felt,  and,  hey  presto  !  your  aviary  is  ready  for  its  inmates. 
THE  THING  THAT  COUNTS. 
"  Now  for  our  friend's  practical  experience  extending  over  many  years.  He 
says  :  *  Do  not  have  too  many  male  birds.  If  you  do  much  fighting  and  destruction 
of  eggs  takes  place.  Eight  or  nine  Canary  cocks  are  quite  enough  for  twenty-five 
hen  Canaries.'  To  which  I  can  add  the  news  that  he  usually  has  a  small  swarm 
of  Canaries  to  dispose  of  to  the  dealers  after  every  breeding  season.  Working  on 
these  lines  you  are  always  on  the  tip  toe  of  expectation,  as  when  the  young  birds 
appear  the  parentage  is  nearly  always  in  doubt.  For  nesting  places  my  friend  is 
quite  eccentric.  Small  wooden  boxes  with  half  the  lid  broken  off  and  the 
remaining  half  nailed  down,  cocoa  nut  shells,  tins,  regulation  earthenware  pots, 
anything  in  fact  that  a  nest  can  be  built  in.  Branches  of  trees  are  often  fixed  to 
these  nesting  places,  behind  which  the  hens  sit  in  quiet  seclusion.  In  a  house 
built  on  similar  lines  but  without  the  open  fly,  with  the  inmates  all  paired  in 
separate  boxes  with  loose  wire  fronts,  one  of  our  most  successful  (Southern) 
breeders  year  by  year  successfully  produces  many  rare  and  beautiful  hybrids, 
which  tends  to  prove  that  bird  lovers  who  cannot  spare  a  room  in  the  house  for 
their  pets,  may  profit  by  the  details  given  herein,  and  having  built  themselves  an 
outdoor  aviary,  will  be  enabled  to  give  free  rein  to  the  hobby  of  keeping  cage 
birds." 
LIMITATIONS  OF  THE  SYSTEM. 
As  our  contributor  justly  points  out  at  the  beginning,  there  is  a  limit  to  the 
amount  of  control  which  a  breeder  can  exercise  over  the  selection  and  breeding 
for  typical  exhibition  points  in  a  stock  of  birds  which  are  allowed  to  fly  at  liberty 
in  an  aviary.  Still,  it  does  not  follow  that  this  control  must  necessarily  be 
obliterated.  A  large  proportion  of  it  will  certainly  have  to  be  sacrificed,  but 
sufficient  may  be  retained  to  enable  the  owner  to  exercise  a  substantial  amount  of 
control  over  the  minor  qualities  of  the  stock  in  general,  although  the  absolute 
control  necessary  for  pedigree  breeding  and  the  production  of  superlative  exhibition 
points  will  be  wanting. 
But  in  this  class  of  breeding  one  may  still  adhere  to  the  chief  principles  of 
control  by  restricting  any  particular  point  to  the  one  sex.  Thus,  for  example,  one 
may  make  up  a  group  of  birds  consisting  of  a  clear  yellow  cock  and  a  lightly 
ticked,  or  wing,  or  eye,  marked  yellow  cock,  but  let  the  tick  or  mark  be  on  tke 
small  side,  and  the  bird  bred  from  two  clear  parents,  and  add  five  or  six  buff  hens, 
for  which  the  following  would  make  a  good  selection,  viz.,  one  clear  bird  bred 
from  double  yellows,  or  with  a  fair  amount  of  marked  blood  in  her  veins ;  two 
lightly  ticked ;  one  wing  or  eye  marked,  with  small  but  good  shaped  mark,  or 
marks,  and  not  bearing  the  same  marks  as  the  cock.    For  instance,  if  you  are 
