Deckmbku 11. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
185 
the bird was old, and I was unsuccessful in breeding from him 
among oiu' domestic Canaries. I have formerly seen many 
I specimens of a similar I night green plumage, but such are 
now rarely met with; grey being now a much more frequent 
I colour, though 1 regard the bright or parrot-green, as the 
I original, and by far the handsomest colour; but among the 
tame Canaries there is great variety in this respect, and 
some authors have enumerated as many as twenty-nijie or 
I thirty varieties of colour, supi)osed to be the etl'ect of do- 
I mestication jind careful breeding. There are, however, 
other diliereuces, which 1 consider of more importance than 
mere colour. I allude to their varieties of shape and size; 
^ for instance, our old-fashioned English Canaries arc short, 
thick-made birds ; those of Germany are small, delicate, and 
often have red eyes ; while the Belgian birds are long and 
1 sturdy, and, to my fancy, by far exceed the othei'S in appear- 
I ance. I have had them measure eight inches from the tip 
j of the beak to the end of the tail, and I believe they often 
exceed that length. To be handsome birds they must stand 
j upright, and hold their head and tail in a direct line; for if 
1 ,hey stoop, or, as the fanciers term it, are “ hooped,” that is, 
their shoidclers stuck up, and their tails drooping down, 
which many of the long birds are apt to do, they lose much 
of their beaiity. Another peculiarity of these handsome 
birds is the folding of the feathers on the chest, the plume 
oir one side overlapping the other, forming what is termed 
the shirt frill; birds of this kind are very scarce in this 
country, and if of good form and colour are very valuable 
even in Belgium. Some of the French fanciers breed 
tolerably long birds, but their chief aim is to obtain them as 
slim as possible; their rule is, a Canary ought to pass 
through a wedding-ring; but such birds I consider of very 
tender and delicate constitutions. I liave, for some years, 
bred the long Belgium birds, and much prefer them, both 
for figure and song, as well as hardihood and prolificacy; 
but my present stock is smaller than formerly, owing to 
crossing with English birds, from the difficulty of obtaining 
fresh blood of the original variety. 
As I before mentioned, it is in the colouring, or the 
divisions of colours and markings, that the greatest variety 
occurs, and many of these, from their beauty and regularity, 
are highly prized; these sub-varieties, perhaps accidental at 
first, have, by careful breeding, become fixed breeds; and 
as this, as in all other matters of fancy, depends much on 
taste, so each variety has its particular advocates and ad- 
mii'ers. To describe all the varieties, their points, and jjroper- 
ties, would take too much space for the present paper, and 
as there are many 1 am scarcely acquainted with, I shall con¬ 
clude this paper with a brief summary of some of the 
principal colours; of these, the parrof-yreea, with lighter 
breasts and without any white, should take precedence, as 
nearest the wild original. 
Bright i/elloics, or Jonqum^ave usually great favourites, and 
must be free from any dark feathers. Jlleoilcs are vciy 
similar, but the edges of the feathers are white, from which 
cause they are not so highly prized, though frequently the 
stronger birds. Qnq/.t much resemble the common Grey 
Linnets in colour, but rather more inclining to olive-brown, 
and though strong, hearty birds, are but little cared for. 
JJkhs or OinmmoiiK, sometimes called Quakers, are of a drab, 
or cinnamon-brown colour, and are among the most difficult 
to procure. These are all that 1 call to mind of the whole 
coloured birds, Imt of pieds, or mixtures, there are a great 
many. The Lizards are, perhaps, the best known variety; 
the body is of a greenish-grey, the feathers edged or spangled 
with white or yellow; the whole of the top of the head being 
clear yellow, or white; tire bird must be accurate in its 
marking, or it loses caste. The present fancy bird is some¬ 
what of a nondescript; when young, its plumage is much 
like a lizard; at the lirst moult it changes its body feathers, 
and assumes a coat of yellow; but, as young birds rarely 
change their quill feathers at the first moulting, it retains 
eighteen dark feathers in each wing, and twelve in the tail, 
it then being a fancy bird, and in show condition, which is 
difficult to obtain ; and when it moults the larger feathers 
they come lighter; thus, it will be seen, a fancy bird retains 
its peculiarity only for a short time, and is then in a transi¬ 
tion state; consequently, I prefer the continental fancy birds, 
which are bred of a permanent marking, and equally exact 
as to the divisions of colour; some yellow, with dark turned 
crowns or crests; others dark, witli white or yellow heads 
and tails ; others, again, beautifully yellow, with the head 
and wings coloured; some grey, some almost black, others 
green, or cinnamon; these markings are very pretty, and 
when accurate are considered valuable, and the birds rarely 
alter the colour of any feathers during their life.—B. 1*. 
Bkent. 
THE FRUrr-'IREE CULTURE OE TO-DAY. 
Ah me! what a happy man is Mr. Kobson ! He lives in 
the garden of England, Kent. He is, doubtless, a travelled 
gardener; he has been to look at the Orchard house trees of 
Mr. Rivers, now some seven years old, and likely to last 
three or four times seven years; he has also seen those of 
Mr. Lane ; those of Mr. Bewley, at Newton Park, near 
Dublin, and, of course, those at Chiswick. He has also 
seen in Belgium, in Germany, and more particularly in 
France, those plantations of dwarf Apple and Pear trees; 
the former on tlie Paradise, the latter on the Quince stock ! 
A friend just retumed from Bigorre, in the Pyrenees, says, 
“ There is no place like Bigorre for growing pyramidal Pears; 
I never saw such beauties, they covered every tree with fruit.” 
I presume he has not omitted, above all, to visit the Royal 
Gardens, in Russia, where Orchards of fruit-trees of all 
kinds are, and have been, grown in pots and tubs for many 
years, without any symptoms of decay from the confined 
position of their roots. 
Mr. Robson has, of course, seen all those variations in fruit- 
tree culture, and he has returned to his own garden with 
its high brick walls, w'ell covered with Peach and Apricot 
trees that never sufi'er from spring frosts, nor any other 
plagues!—to his well-pruned espaliers on each side of his 
garden walks ; to his orchard, filled with large umbrageous 
standard trees unpruned, but still prolific; and he says, 
“Ah, tliis beats all your new notions; what can a gardener 
W’ant to see better than this ? Talk about Orchard-houses 
and miniature fruit-gmdens—they are all bosh.” 
Ah, Mr. Robson ! I repeat, you are a happy man. 
John Bull has always been a little too haiipy—in his. own 
conceit—; he could “ beat four Frenchmen,” and as to a 
French fruit-garden, it w'as a humbug. Recent events have 
made John begin to doubt respecting what the French do 
and have done, not only in w'ar, but in the peaceful arts; 
and he reads cai-efully written, impartial reports of the 
many, I almost fear too many, things in which they excel 
us, with an anxious shrug. Can we not, therefore, take a 
lesson from them in the art of fruit-tree culture ? I mean 
that happy way they have of making a rery small garden 
rival that of a millionaire in the variety of its products, and 
a very small kitchen, cook 
dishes ? I think we can. 
I was long ago smitten with the idea of making a minia¬ 
ture fruit-garden—perhaps twenty years ago ; and, will Mr. 
Robson believe me ? no longer ago than last April, when the 
blossom-buds of the Pear-trees w ere on the point of burst¬ 
ing, 1 planted a small, irregular piece of ground with 
Pear-tree bushes, grafted on the (Juince stock, and Apples, 
on the Paradise stock. These trees are four feet apart, row 
from row', and four feet apart in the rows. I gathered from 
them Pears anti Apples as fine, and, in some respects, 
finer, as those taken from established trees. Now, is not 
this pleasant ? Mind, I do not live in Kent, and have no 
high w'alls nor well-pruned espaliers, and yet I can give my 
friends a fine dessert. 
I have a dear fiiend who is very fond of Peaclies and 
Nectarines; but his garden is clay, and his climate cold: 
his Peach-trees on his w'alls ahvays failed in bearing. Four 
years ago ho built an Orchard-house; the first year he had 
some fruit, and every year more abundant crops. Now, 
really, this seems an agreeable deviation from honest John 
Bull’s established practice of training Peach and Nectarine- 
trees to brick w'alls. 
Another friend writes mo from near Devonport (his letter 
is dated Nov. 21, 1855) : “ 1 have had a very good crop of 
Apricots in my Orchard-house, especially from the Moor 
Park and large Peach; the latter is by far the best in every 
respect.” Now, this gentleman could not grow Apricots on 
walls in that part of Devonshire, as the trees come so ^arly 
a great number of exquisite 
