55 



but has a more white, or rather silvery, breast and belly ; is restless and active, 

 like the Willow Wrens, [genus Sylvia, as now restricted], and hops from bough 

 to bough, examining every part for food ;* it also runs [or, I should rather say, 

 hops] up the stems of the Crown Imperials, and putting its head into the bells of 

 those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Some- 

 times it feeds on the ground, like the Hedge Dunnock, by hopping about on the 

 grass-plots and mown walks." I have myself observed this latter habit, on more 

 than one occasion. The other Fauvets are hardly ever seen upon the ground. 



I may mention, among other accordances, observable in the Whitebreasted 

 Fauvet and Dusky Furzelin, that both of these little birds emit, on certain emo- 

 tions, a very peculiar low rattling note, which I have heard from no other species. 

 This is repeated sometimes many times in succession, and in confinement, is almost 

 sure to be uttered if any one approach their cage at night with a candle. From 

 trivial peculiarities, such as these, we may judge of the true affinities of species. 



The food of the Whitebreasted Fauvet consists of insects and their larvae, 

 which it seeks for with much assiduity amid the foliage of trees and bushes. It is 

 less eminently frugivorous than the Blackcap and Garden Fauvets, more so than 

 the Whitethroated Fauvet. Its depredations, however, are chiefly confined to the 

 smaller fruits, — cherries, raspberries, and currants ; later in the season, it devours 

 elderberries, apparently feeding almost exclusively upon them. It departs rather 

 late, a few stragglers occasionally remaining till the first week in October ; indeed, 

 that figured in the plate was shot in the last week of the preceding month, and 

 accordingly exhibits the bird just moulted, with its feathers somewhat more neatly 

 finished at the edges, than in those specimens which are killed in spring. 



Nearly all birds shed, in the course of the spring and summer, the extreme 

 terminal edgings of their feathers, and this by a natural process ; not by their gra- 

 dually wearing away, as is the common opinion. Thus, the white spots which 

 adorn, in winter, the tertiary wing feathers of the Garden Siskin,-]- / Carduelis 



* It will be observed that this most accurate naturalist does not by any means here 

 corroborate the accounts given by Selby, Mudie, Neville Wood, and others, of the hidling 

 habits of this species, nor lead one in the least to infer that it is " exclusively an inhabit- 

 ant of the closest underwood ;" but that the general tenor of his observations entirely 

 bears out, on the contrary, what I have been asserting. If it be worth while quoting 

 corroborative testimony, the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert, in one of his interesting annota- 

 tions to "White's Selborne, justly remarks, on this particular passage, that " this bird cer- 

 tainly was not the Pettychaps [Garden Fauvet], which has not the manners here de- 

 scribed ;" but that " the detail exactly answers to the Blue-grey, or Lesser Whitethroat." 

 —p. 304. 



+ For uniformity sake, I thus term the " Goldfinch" of the books ; which latter term 

 is however applied, in Yorkshire, to the Yellow Bunting. Hence the necessity of a sys- 

 tematical nomenclature. 



