OH BREEDING HYBRIDS. 
63 
cup-builder; but no hybrids between Ploeeid and Fringillid Finches 
have ever been exhibited at any of our shows. 
My friend Professor Scott told me of the best way in which to 
produce hybrids freely between Canaries and other birds, a plan 
which would doubtless be equally useful if applied to different 
species of Finches apart from Canaries. A room is set apart for 
the breeding of Mules, a good many hen Canaries are turned loose 
therein, together with many cock Finches, each belonging to a, 
different species; plenty of nesting receptacles are fixed up, and 
abundance of building material supplied. It follows, as a matter of 
course, that every bird reared in that room must necessarily be a 
Mule. 
When I hear of Mules produced between a Canary and a Robin, 
Skylark, or any other insectivorous bird, I know that I am listen- 
ing to a fairy tale. A young Canary is fed by its mother upon half- 
digested food consisting of biscuit or bread, yolk of egg, and water- 
cress or chickweed, together with seed ; a young Robin is fed upon 
broken-up small worms, but chiefly hunting-spiders, small cater- 
pillars, and the like, moistened but not half -digested ; a young 
Skylark is fed upon small insects with their larva*, and perhaps 
grass seeds, undigested. It therefore stands to reason that, if it 
were possible for an insectivorous bird to fertilise the eggs of a 
Canary, so that they hatched, the Finch would be unsuccessful in 
rearing the Mules. ' To attempt to produce such hybrids, therefore, 
is to waste time which might be more profitably employed in breed- 
ing possible Mules. 
The crosses which have been produced between one wild Finch 
and another interest me even more than those produced with the 
domesticated Canary ; but when regularly bred year after year they 
Mr. Mather’s Aviary. 
become monotonous and wearisome. Of all the hybrids between 
British birds the Goldfinch-Bullfinch is the most beautiful, but we 
know it thoroughly now ; it is familiar to all who attend bird shows, 
