CANARIES.
IT is a safe assertion that the majority of mankind regard Canaries with only a feeble interest, as characterless crea- tures, of a monotonous kind. There is something to be said for that hasty generalisation, and as pets, we do not think Canaries !Ole sources of sustained interest or of unalloyed delight. They get bronchitis, and whatever is the bird-equivalent for "staggers," with distressing facility ; they hang themselves by their own absurd little claws, if their tiny talons are not trimmed with punctuality and neatness ; they sing most sweetly and piercingly at inappro- priate moments, and there is a divided interest, wholly irrecon- cilable, between them and the cat. On the other hand, a canary is the only living creature whom one sees with entire complacence in a cage. From the great sea-eagle, or his golden brother, with their wistful eyes with all the pain that imprisonment can in- flict on strength and fierceness in them, to the busy, little, pot- tering, brown wren, who in an aviary is all a-twitter for the hedge-side, there is no other bird that does not pain us, while we admire its form and plumage with a secret felonious impulse to let it out, and then stroll away in- nocently unconcerned. But a canary in a cage seems right and fitting, when it has p'enty of notice and human society, which it likes. It does not huddle itself into a corner, except in the case of bronchitis or bird-staggers, and peer wistfully into the air-tracks with the listening look which we have all seen in birds, as though they heard the flutter and the sweep of free wings far away. It is, on the whole, a living creature about whose lot there is not much to pain one, and it seems to get as much out of the narrow compass of its little life as there is to be got. It has a market value, and is, therefore, pretty safe from promiscuous cruelty, and we have not heard of its being tortured in the interests of intellectual progress since Lord George Gordon's rioters tossed a cageful of canaries into the Protestant bonfire in Moorfields.
These are, however, only negative views of the Canary ; for positive views there was a capital opportunity at the Crystal Palace last week, especially if one went there early in the bright, sunny morning, when nobody but the birds was on the far side of the crimson curtain, under the great white awning, and one might interview fifteen hundred of them in undisturbed leisure. Fifteen hundred, or nearly that number, all busy, and all except those whose as yet unfinished toilettes occupied their attention and their beaks otherwise, singing as if the phenomenon of sunshine struck them with no less astonishment than it inspired in the breast of British humanity, and met with more melodious recognition. Such sweet singing, such musical rustling, in the great, quiet space, made one think of walking in a wood in Avilion, or anywhere that is not ; a human tres- passer, indeed, but welcomed by myriads of unmolested, un- frightened winged creatures. The alertness, the life, the won- derful variety of them ; the quaintness of some, the fussiness of others, and the curious effects that the canary-fanciers have obtained in their endeavours to produce birds which shall be as unlike the original canary as possible, would take many hours to study ; but the general effect of it all is charming. There are great numbers of beautiful birds which one would hardly believe to be canaries, but for the catalogue, for their breasts and wings are amber, orange, cinnamon-colour, almost red, and they have the funniest little bead-tire; sometimes a sober peruke of flaxen feathers, neatly flattened at the sides, like the stage versions of Baillie Nicol Jarvie's wig ; sometimes a pert little top-knot of dark, thread-like feathers, worn as saucily as a rink-hat; and again one finds a " gamin " among canaries, with a wink in his black eyes, the shrillest of whistles, and a dis- orderly black cap flung carelessly, anyhow, on his round little head, and tilted over his beak. These varieties are in great demand, especially the deep-coloured, concerning which there was for some time much wonderment among
publie, and the maintenance of a profound mystery on the part of the fortunate inventor of the variety. How was it done? everybody interested in Canaries asked. At last it was found out—perhaps through the indiscretion of Peter Piper, who may now be supposed to have been a canary—and the secret was cayenne pepper! Chopped eggs and cayenne pepper,—could more incongruous diet be associated with the innocent choristers of conservatories? What would Jean Jacques have said to it?
The canaries like it exceedingly, and would willingly peck a great deal more of the stimulating food than would be good for them. Slices of carrot may be discerned in their cages, and that once contemned vegetable is said also to " help " the colouring. But let not the unwary purchaser of an orange-breasted canary exult too soon in his possession of a bird as unlike the original as science and fashion have as yet succeeded in making him. Nature, to use the homely but expressive phrase of Hans Breit- mann, " will prove a bad egg for him yet." The pepper-procured colour is not fast, it lasts only until the first moulting ; then the over-stepped modesty of Nature resumes its sway, the sweet "canary- colour" comes back—the colour which Lubin affec ted in his waistcoats when Phoebe's top-knot was sky-blue—and not all Peter Piper's peck of pepper, even with the unintelligible addition of the pickling, will dye that bird's feathers to any other tint. Very quaint and dainty are the slim, delicate canaries whose plumage is no deeper than a pale primrose, and whose sleek heads are indes- cribably elegant and contemplative. Their peculiar feathering, with little bunches on their tiny thigh-bones, their long, dainty legs, and their high-shouldered shape, in some like a hump, in
others merely like a shrug, give them a scornful, aristocratic air, as of Mr. Carlyle's notion of French marquises, when they wore primrose silken coats, and long vests with dangling breloques, and shrugged their shoulders previous to the shearing of them. It is very curious to note the character imparted to the birds by any little variation. Here is one with a gingerbread-speckled poll, and a wider rim than usual round his eyes, whose aspect is quite pro- fessorial ; and another, with a decided hump, and a contemplative air, who leans back in a corner of his cage, with an irresistible resemblance to Hablot Browne's drawing of Master Humphrey, in the old, old days, when his " Clock" was wound up and going. In a cage close by is a beautiful creature, with pale-yellow wings, an orange breast, and a black cap, Queen Titania' 's racing-colours, whose stud is winged ; and it has just lunched heartily on seed-cake, and having reascended its perch, is "chortling in its joy." There is never a complete lull in the song of the fifteen hundred, but every now and then there comes, by seeming general consent, a grand, chorus-like outburst of music, so that the presiding cockatoos—permanent residents in the Palace, and above the vulgar ambition of competition—grow excited, scream, and flap, and cloop approvingly. In many instances, care is taken to enhance and bring out the beauty of the birds' colouring by the background of the cage, now dark blue, now light; and one lovely clear yellow Yorkshire is dancing, after a stately fashion, with the daintiest little legs and feet, on a perch of crimson and gold. The scales on the wee, slim claws look quite transparent against the rich colour, and the pale-yellow feathers form a delightful harmony with it. York- shire is most honourably represented, and Norwich is as dis- tinguished at the more ;esthetic as it is at the eminently practical poultry-show, of which its prosperous but anxious- minded hens, its absurdly pompous and protesting geese, and its turkeys, so irascible and so fat, are always distinguished ornaments.
The fifteen hundred have not, however, all the honours of the song-and-colour filled space to themselves. " An Amateur " ex- nibits a large number of foreign -birds, many of them reared in his own aviary. He imputes his success in rearing certain birds, natives of tropical countries, to keeping a perpetual light in the aviary, so that they can feed with the constancy and perseverance of their kind in countries where the sun only nods now and then. They are very beautiful, but for the most part songless. There are vivid-coloured Japanese Nonpareils, tinted with the brilliant patches which we know on fans and screens, and they are quick, jerky, and incessant in their movements, with a prying. manner about them, as befits birds of enlightened minds and strong notions of progress. They contrast curiously with a pair of beautiful birds from India, who walk with a slow, majestic tread, and whose exquisitely shaded, neutral-tinted plumage, in subdued browns, greys, and silver, may have served as a model for the unrivalled colour-blending of Indian textile fabrics. A glance into a cage hard by shows us a bunch of snub-nosed shell-birds- they might have been transmuted an hour ago—clustering to- gether in urgent bird-congress and debate. A nest of the wonder- ful weaver-bird, shaped like a retort, so that the young may nestle secure from insects in its safe retreat, hangs near them ; and close by is a splendid specimen of the Blood-wing Parakeet, —a gorgeously beautiful creature this, with its plumage of the greenest green and the reddest red ; something stern and harsh about it too, and the effect bf the wing, as it lets it drop suddenly, almost startling. It is as though the bird had lighted on a murder in its forest flight, and having dipped its wing in blood, bad flown hither "to carry the matter." As beautiful, and not less curious, is the Abyssinian helmet-bird, with its dark-crimson wings, which, if you soak them in water, will dye your ribbons for you as fast ' as Mr. Judson's handiest little tubes of colour ; and they explain that, too, like the canaries and the cayenne pepper, telling us that there is much copper in the helmet-bird's country, and it gets into his system. Who could tell of the beautiful birds with heads like apricots just ripened, or those on whose polls there is the bloom of the almond's soft-green Nell ; of the golden oriole, which has a forest vision in its very name ; of keen-eyed creatures in sage-green and fawn- colour, who are rather offended at the vicinity of the " feathered crew," and hold themselves very bolt upright upon their perches ; of birds with tonsures, and birds who must remind the most careless observer of a middle-aged French bourgeois in a fur cap ; of birds with a strong likeness to Fagin the Jew, whom Cruikshank drew ; of fat-throated, beady-eyed birds, who gather themselves up before they begin to warble, and suggest Italian opera-singers ; and of educated birds who are bores ? Of the latter, there are several who talk by the card or the catalogue, but one is content to take the word of the owner who has so imposed upon a handsome, harmless, white jackdaw as to teach it to say, "Johnny, make way for your uncle !" awl of a grey parrot who screams, " Give us a bit !" A blue robin looked very uncomfortable, and turned his blue tail persistently to the outer world ; perhaps he was harassed by the noise made by his near neighbour, a toucan, who is as much out of his place in a cage as the proverbial trout upon a gravel walk. Fancy the grim bird, with his enormous beak (which looks so heavy, and is of feather-like lightness), like the large claw of a boiled lobster—a curious implement, the use of which is not de- fined, but supposed to be the enabling of it to reach its insect food at a distance, as it forages among the Brazilian forest trees— penned in a little cage not much longer than itself, with its larder under its feet ! There was a world of complaint in its black, jewel-like eye, in a setting of carved turquoise.
A distinguished member of the plumed company was a magni- ficent owl, upon whom one came suddenly with a start, caused partly by his solitary grandeur of aspect, and partly by his placard, which announced him " dangerous." He had justified the de- scription by biting a couple of his temporary attendants pretty severely, and if ever there lurked in the soul of a bird the wish that all mankind had only one finger, and that he could get the chance of biting it off, that sentiment was expressed in the bearing, and in the proud eyes, with deep-golden settings, long lids, and thick eyelashes to them, and never a blink in their fierce gaze, of the superb owl who sat, folded in his feather cloak to the tips of his powerful claws, motionless, wearily disdainful, but as wide-awake in his single self as all the fifteen hundred contemptible chits around him,—a noble creature truly, and to be had for ten pounds ! But it would only be melancholy to buy him, for he would never come to like one, or be happy until one let him go to kill his thousands in the dark, after his fierce heart and appetite. Not far from him, and in strong contrast to him, was a whitey-grey parrot, surely the most human-like and sagacious of its tribe. Unfathomable experience winked and trembled in its nearly colourless old eyes, and mumbled in its pebbly beak. It climbed heavily down from its perch, trembling visibly under its feathers, it gazed solemnly upon the visitor, it uttered a treble screech, not of anger, merely of recognition of general facts, such as bird- shows, and the like, and it went golutnphing back, and sank into a weary slumber. That was a parrot which might preach with effect, and, judging from its hopelessness of aspect, its text would be probably, " Feather-trimmings." It passed its youth, most likely, perched on the throne of King Solomon.
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