Mule 
Breeding-. 
(64) THE BIRD WORLD. 
with little black bodies and tufts of 
grey down, and all three quite dead. 
Necessity the Mother of Invention. 
Here was a disappointment! 
“ Swithun,” or one of the other birds 
(but I strongly suspect “ Swithun ” her¬ 
self), had carried the young birds, to 
the window, and either killed them or 
left them to perish. I looked into the 
nest, and there were the other two eggs 
not yet hatched. Now it happened that 
I had a hen Canary sitting on eggs in 
a cage in my boudoir, so, without a 
moment’s delay, I took “ Swithun’s ” 
two remaining eggs and popped them 
into the Canary’s nest. 
Within an hour I looked to see if 
they could have hatched, and found— 
not another little nigger like the three 
dead ones in the bird-room, but a 
young bird with as pink a body as a 
clear Canary, with tufts of white down, 
and with (what was a still greater sur¬ 
prise), pink eyes showing under the 
skin. The mystery was solved; the 
father of the young birds was one of my 
Cinnamon Canaries, of which there were 
several in the bird-room, and this young 
one, being a hen, had the light skin 
and pink eyes of the Cinnamon, whereas 
the others were doubtless cocks, and 
had they lived, would have been 
ordinary dark Linnet-Mules. 
A Point Worth Noting. 
For the benefit of the uninitiated I 
must here state that unless both parents 
are of Cinnamon blood, the young cocks 
never have the Cinnamon plumage and 
pink eyes, only the young hens have 
that distinction. This I have proved 
over and over again, and it is a fact 
known to all bird fanciers. The next 
day another young bird with a black 
body and grey down was hatched in 
the Canary’s nest, and grew up to be a 
very pretty dark cock Linnet-Mule, but 
the hen Mule with the pink eyes was 
the treasure, as such birds are most 
uncommon, for I suppose A.he father 
would be the Linnet and the mother the 
Canary in the case of ninety-nine 
Linnet-Mules out of a hundred, and it 
would then be impossible to breed 
Cinnamon Mules. 
“Vanilla,” as I called her, became 
a beautiful bird of that delicate shade 
of fawn colour that one seldom sees in 
Cinnamon birds. She is now four 
years old, very tame, and will feed 
from my hand. She has been flying 
about my boudoir this morning, while 
I have been writing this account of her, 
and she has now flown back happily to 
the large cage which she shares with 
the Greenfinch-Mule, whose story I must 
tell presently. 
Siskin-Redpoll Hybrids. 
I had in my bird-room two cock 
Siskins and three Redpolls, a cock and 
two hens. I had had the cock many 
years, but the hens I had bought only 
the autumn before, and they were so 
wild that whenever I went into the room 
they would fly frantically from one end 
to the other, as long as I was there. I 
mention this to show what pleasant sur¬ 
prises one often has in the delightful 
hobby of bird-keeping, for it was one 
of these hens that built a nest the 
following July in a square wooden nest- 
box hanging on the wall of the bird- 
room, and sat so well that she would 
allow me to walk about the room with¬ 
out flying off her nest. She laid five 
eggs, but as I thought it very unlikely 
that she would hatch them, I placed two 
of the eggs under a Canary that was 
sitting on eggs in a cage in my boudoir. 
On the twelfth day one egg was 
hatched in the Redpoll’s nest, and two 
in the Canary’s, but one of these died. 
The next morning another was hatched 
in the Redpoll’s nest, and the fifth 
egg did not hatch, so I had three young 
birds, two under the Redpoll and one 
under the Canary. Directly the last 
one was hatched, I noticed that it 
looked rather different from the other 
two, it was smaller, and the down was 
of a lighter shade, nearly white, 
although the body was quite dark. 
(To be continued.') 
