Canary birds : how to breed for profit or pleasure an exhaustive treatise on all the different breeds with chapters on pairing, colour, breeding, feeding cages, nesting, egg food, sanitary measures, diseases to which the canary bird is subject, &c., &c / by Karl Russ ; authorised translation.

  • Russ, Karl
Date:
[1880?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Canary birds : how to breed for profit or pleasure an exhaustive treatise on all the different breeds with chapters on pairing, colour, breeding, feeding cages, nesting, egg food, sanitary measures, diseases to which the canary bird is subject, &c., &c / by Karl Russ ; authorised translation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HISTORY. in the capture and sale of those birds a new source of gain which, it must be owned, they worked to excess. They also successfully commenced to breed the birds, and, from Italy, the breed spread to countries of a more northerly situation, especially to the Tyrol and to other parts of Germany. Thus the breeding and, afterwards, the trade in these birds began to flourish in the liveliest manner. As early as the latter part of the last century, there existed at Tmst 1 an associa- tion which every year after the breeding time despatched buyers to the canary-breeders in Germany and Switzerland in order to buy up the young birds—a practice that con- tinues to the present day. The birds collected in this fashion were then hawked about and traded with as an article of commerce throughout Germany ; and even as far back as this they were exported in small quantities to Russia, Constantinople, Egypt, and to England where they sold at fifteen shillings per head; a similar trade later on being developed in the Black Forest and in other parts of Germany. Keeping pace with the progress in the breeding, the trade naturally extended, and steadily increased. It has, of late, been repeatedly attempted to establish the theory that the bird that has become acclimatised to our regions is by no means descended from the species which, even now, inhabits the Canary Isles in a state of freedom, but that it owes its origin to a continuous cross-breeding between some greenish-yellow varieties of the finch-species which can easily be tamed, and which are domesticated in our country and in other parts of the world; for although, since the commencement of the 18th century, the books treating of the canary-bird have become more and more numerous, yet the precise epoch in which the transition from the green hue to the yellow took place cannot be ascertained 1 Small place on the Tyrol.
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