the Canary’s eood. 
white-tinned sort. It should be furnished with two transverse 
perches, one about six inches above the other. The food and 
drinking vessels should be suspended outside the cage, or, if 
placed within the cage, each vessel should be fitted with a lid 
in which a round hole, large enough easily to admit a bird’s 
head, is cut ; otherwise, great splashing of water and a con- 
siderable waste of seed will result. Take care that the floor of 
your cage is movable, and always strewn with coarse sand. 
Study the disposition of your canary : many a good bird has J 
been lost through this being neglected. Some canaries are 
convivial, — fond of company, and of singing glees and choruses. j 
Others, from excessive modesty or excessive vanity (see how j 
extremes meet !), prefer singing alone, and will mope and sulk \ 
while in the presence of another bird. Some canaries, again, 
grow furious at hearing other birds sing, and will so exert ; 
then* powers to drown the music of their rivals with their own, 
as to make a separation at once necessary. Indeed, under such 
circumstances, canaries have been known to expire suddenly of 
ruptured blood-vessels. 
The Canary’s Food. — This is most important. Let the 
food be as true to nature as possible, and have little to do with 
artificial compounds. Let your standard be rape-seed, — 
summer rape-seed. There is another sort — winter rape-seed, — j 
but this is not nearly so good ; it may be distinguished from j 
the proper sort by its being larger and blacker. Mix with this 
occasionally, and by way of a treat, cabbage-seed, whole oats, or 
canary-seed. If it be summer-time, their food may be varied 
by the addition of a sprig of water-cress (not land-cress), a head 
of groundsel, or a bit of cabbage-leaf. In the winter a canary 
will be grateful for a morsel of sweet apple. When the birds 
are breeding, bruised hemp-seed may be mixed with the cus- 
tomary food. Do not give your canary lump-sugar, or plum- 
cake, or even bread-and-butter. He will eat them greedily 
enough, but the chance is, you may get up one morning and 
find him, dead of rupture, at the bottom of the cage. Lump- 
sugar is not found on trees, plum-cake does not grow on hedges, 
therefore it is certain that the birds can do without such things. 
A small lump of bay-salt is by no means a bad thing to stick 
between the bars of a canary cage. The bird will relish it, and it 
will help to counteract the baneful effects of high and indis- 
criminate feeding. 
Having told you the sort of food to administer, I will proceed 
to inform you how to administer it. I have heard many people 
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