136 TtJRDUS MUSICUS. 



and slender grasses, but certainly no decayed wood, as some 

 allege to be usually the case. This nest is in diameter three 

 inches and a half, in depth two and a half, its greatest diame- 

 ter seven inches, and its greatest depth four and a half. This 

 is the nest of a civilized Thrush, it having been found in a 

 hedge in the immediate vicinity of Modern Athens. 



On the 5th May, 1836, I found in a honeysuckle bush in a 

 wood between Haddington and Gifford, the nest of a Thrush, 

 in which the bird was working at the time, completing its in- 

 terior, in which was a piece of wet rotten wood, quite soft and 

 friable, which it was applying to the walls. Another nest 

 found near Gifford was plastered with horse dung. One 

 brought to me from Melville Woods, on the 3d May 1837, by 

 my son, who found in it five eggs, is composed externally of 

 twigs, straws, and stems of herbaceous plants ; its inner cup of 

 a few slender twigs of trees, stems and leaves of grasses, oak- 

 leaves, and a large proportion of mosses, interwoven and agglu- 

 tinated, but without mud. The lining, which is not thicker 

 than two-twelfths of an inch at most, is certainly composed 

 entirely of fragments of rotten wood and other vegetable sub- 

 stances, without any mud, clay, or dung. Its internal diame- 

 ter at the mouth is three inches and a half, but below the 

 mouth four inches, the depth two and a half. In all the spe- 

 cimens which I have examined, the mouth of the inner cup is 

 contracted and firmly woven. 



The eggs are generally five, but vary from four to six, of a 

 regular or broad oval form, bright bluish-green, with scattered 

 spots of broM-nish-black, of a roundish form, and more numer- 

 ous at the larger end. They vary considerably in size, the 

 largest in my collection measuring thirteen-twelfths by nine 

 and a half, the smallest eleven and a half by eight and a half 

 twelfths. They are deposited in the end of April, sometimes 

 so early as the beginning of that month, and sometimes not 

 until ]May. The young I have found abroad from the twen- 

 tieth of April to the middle of June. Another brood is gene- 

 rally reared in the season. 



!Mr Weir, to whom the reader of these volumes is indebted 

 for so many curious and interesting observations relative to the 



