From the beginning of the eighteenth century there is a constantly increasing output of books devoted to cage-birds in general and canary birds in particular,§ so that it is possible to reconstruct their history. In Willoughby's Ornithology (ray, quoting an earlier English author, it is stated: Canary birds Of late years have been brought abundantly out of Germany and are therefore now called German birds; and these German birds in handsome ness and song excel those brought out of the Canaries.