Mule' 
Breeding. 
(104) THE BIRD WORLD. 
My Greenfinch Mule. 
A wounded Greenfinch flew into the 
house of a friend of mine through an 
open window. He may have been hurt 
by a cat; anyhow, his wing was bleed¬ 
ing, and he never recovered the use of 
it, but he soon made himself happy in 
a cage, and became very tame. After 
two or three years he was given to me, 
and as he w^s then in full song I thought 
I would provide him with a mate. 
During that summer and the following 
one I tried him with five different hen 
Canaries, but he took a violent dislike 
to each of them until the fifth. 
He seemed to take a fancy to her, and 
all went w r ell. Two young birds were 
hatched, but one of them was deformed 
and blind, and had to be destroyed. 
The other, “ Leo,” is very like a Green¬ 
finch, but much more slim, and of a 
much brighter shade of green. The 
yellow bars on the wings are very 
clearly defined, and in the spring 
the top of his head is very lustrous, his 
under parts are bright yellowish-green, 
and he is all life and vivacity. His 
mother was a handsome jonque Canary, 
which accounts for the brilliancy of his 
plumage. 
He has three distinct songs, one that 
of a Canary, another that of the Green¬ 
finch, and a third is the song of a Gold¬ 
finch which was in the same room with 
him when he first began to sing. He is 
more of a Greenfinch than a Canary in 
his ways, and is a very strong bii d, 
never ailing and always bright and 
cheerful. As pets I much prefer Mules 
to Canaries; they have much more in¬ 
telligence, and, being more hardy, they 
live longer. 
The Names of the 
Lapwing. 
A Northern writer, speaking of the 
many names of the Lapwing, says:— 
“ * Tuchit or Teuchit ’ is good Scots- 
Northumbrian for the bird more gener¬ 
ally known as the Lapwing. If the 
more uncouth name is unknown in Ber¬ 
wickshire to-day it is only another proof 
that the robust appellatives of the north- 
country are gradually giving way before 
the more euphonious but less expressive 
alternatives of the south. Leyden has 
referred to the Tuq'uheit or Lapwing. 
But the name is centuries older than the 
poet of bonnie Teviotdale. It is found 
and frequently repeated in precisely this 
form in ‘ The Houlat,’ by John Holland, 
about 1450, an elaborate satire on 
James II. of Scotland. The name 
‘ Tuquheit ’ is, however, by no means 
universal among the early poets, and 
which of the two is prior in point of 
time it might be difficult to decide. In 
the ‘ Assembly of Foules,’ Chaucer re¬ 
cites a list of English birds ‘ of every 
kind that men thinke may,’ from the 
‘ royall egle ’ to the ‘ nobill nightingall,’ 
and ‘ The fals Lapwing, full of 
trecherie.’ And the latter name made 
its appearance early in Berwickshire, foi 
in ‘ Thanks for a Summer Day,’ by 
Alexander Hume of Polwart, circa 1575, 
a delightfully natural description of 
rural sights and sounds, of birds, and 
bees, and ‘ rowtting kye and jolie hirds,’ 
the subject of this interesting contro¬ 
versy is introduced in the following 
quatrain 
“ Quhilk (the dawn of day) sune perceaves the 
lytill larkis, 
The Lapwing and the snype, 
And tunes theair sangs like nature’s clerkis 
Ouer medow, muir, and strype.’ ” 
