FOOD.--This is an important point, for, in proportion as it is simple and natural, it will be wholesome; and, on the contrary, the more it is mixed and rare, the more injurious and productive of disease will it be. What I have found the best is summer rape-seed; I mean that which is sown at the end of spring, which is small and brown, in distinction from the winter rape-seed, which is sown in the autumn, and which is large and black. This seed alone agrees with canaries as well as with linnets: but to give them the pleasure of variety, a little bruised hemp or canary, or poppy-seed, is added to it, especially in the spring, when they are intended to breed. Indeed a mixture of summer rape-seed, oatmeal and millet, or canary-seed, may be given them as a great treat. But whatever seeds they may have, they equally require green food, as chickweed in spring, lettuce and radish leaves in summer, endive, water-cress, and slices of sweet apple, in winter. As to that whimsical and complicated mixture, prescribed and used by many people, of rape, millet, hemp, canary seed, whole oats and oatmeal, poppy, lettuce, plantain, potentilla, and pink seeds, maize, sugar, cake, hard biscuit, cracknels, buns, and the like, so far from being wholesome, it injures the birds in every respect. It spoils their taste, weakens their stomachs, renders them feeble, sickly, and incapable of bearing moulting, under which they most frequently die. It is true, they may be accustomed to eat of everything which comes to table, but to teach this habit is also to prepare a poison for them, which though slow is not the less sure, and brings them to a premature death; whilst every day we see bird-fanciers who are poor, who hardly know the names of these delicacies, rear, on the simplest food, a considerable number of the healthiest, cleverest, and strongest canaries. We must, however, be guided in a great measure by the constitutions of the birds. They should be daily supplied with fresh water, as well for drinking as bathing, in which they delight. In the moulting season, a nail or bit of iron should be put into the water, in order to strengthen the stomach. Saffron and liquorice are in this case more hurtful than useful. Grains of the sand, with which the bottom of the cage is strewed, afford the birds a help to digestion. What has been said above, refers solely to the food of full-grown canaries; the young, which cannot feed themselves, require a different diet.