Our  Canaries 
273 
REMINISCENCES  OF  OLD  STRAINS. 
For  the  following  interesting  paper  on  this  breed  and  recollections  of  the 
past  generation,  we  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Levi  Butterworth.  "  When  I  was  a 
youngster,"  he  writes,  "  I  often  heard  my  grandfather  speak  about  breeding 
Canaries  when  he  was  young.  Had  he  been  living  now  he  would  have  been 
many  years  over  a  hundred.  The  variety  he  kept  he  called  '  mooned  'uns,' 
which  I  found  later  were  Lizards,  For  when  I  commenced  to  breed  Lizards 
forty-three  years  ago  I  fetched  him  to  look  at  my  first  nest  of  three  young 
ones  when  ready  for  leaving  the  nest.  The  moment  he  saw  them  he  said  : 
*  Why,  they  are  '  mooned  'uns  '  and  grand  'uns  too.'  I  asked  him  why  he  called 
them  •  mooned  'uns.'  '  Why,  when  they  moult,'  he  said,  '  their  backs  will  be 
full  of  'moons.'  I  said,  'They  call  them  Spangled  Lizards  now.'  'That  may 
be,'  he  replied,  'but  we  called  them  '  mooned  'uns '  in  my  Canary  breeding 
days.'  He  further  informed  me  that  the  cap  was  the  chief  property,  and  that 
it  was  very  rare  to  see  a  '  mooned  'un '  with  a  very  good  cap  at  the  time  he 
was  breeding  them.  When  I  first  commenced  to  breed  Canaries  there  was  a 
certain  strain  of  Lizard  known  as  the  lemon-jonque  on  account  of  the  pale 
yellow  cap  somewhat  the  colour  of  a  lemon,  and  in  its  nest  feathers  had  a 
back  full  of  straight  narrow  rowing.  After  the  first  moult  the  colour  of  the 
cap  and  the  edges  of  the  small  feathers  were  of  the  same  pale  yellow  colour. 
The  Spangle  being  not  nearly  so  distinct  as  that  of  the  orange-coloured 
variety  breeders  saw  that  it  stood  no  chance  on  the  show  bench,  and  so  re- 
fused to  breed  with  it  and  the  strain  died  out." 
AN    OLD    AND    ILL-FAVOURED  STRAIN. 
"  About  the  same  time  there  was  another  strain  known  as  the  flat  or 
hollow-backed  Lizard.  This  bird  had  large  distinct  Spangling,  or  *  moons,'  as 
we  called  them,  distributed  all  over  the  back  and  not  in  straight  rows  as  in 
the  Lizard  of  to-day.  This  class  of  bird  had  very  often  a  parting  of  the 
feathers,  or  split,  down  the  centre  of  the  back,  and  very  rarely  got  '  in  the 
money  '  at  any  show.  The  variety  gradually  became  scarcer  until  it  has  now 
almost  died  out,  like  the  lemon-jonque. 
OLD-TIME  EXHIBITING. 
*'  There  are  many  different  shades  of  colour  in  Lizards,  but  I  have  had 
the  best  results  from  pairing  a  deep  coloured  Gold  cock  with  a  very  light 
coloured  Silver  hen.  By  light  coloured  I  do  not  mean  cloudy,  but  that  the  light 
fringes  on  the  feathers  should  be  very  white  or  silvery.  Or  I  mate  a  light  Silver 
hen  to  a  very  dark  Gold  cock.  In  either  case  the  spangling  should  be  as  distinct 
and  as  large  as  possible. 
In  the  olden  times  Lizards  were  shown  in  the  open-wire  Lancashire  show 
cage.  At  that  time  All-England  Shows  were  few  and  far  between,  and  it 
was  'only  when  All-England  Shows  became  more  common  that  the  Lizard  was 
