46 Birds I Have Kept. 



of diet to keep it in good health in the house all the year 

 round: otherwise it soon becomes afflicted with diarrhoea or 

 atrophy, often with both these complaints together, and when 

 such is the case, the best thing to do is to restore the bird 

 to liberty, when natural diet and fresh air will bring him 

 round if not too far gone. A Eobin will sometimes cast up 

 a number of little pellets, consisting of morsels of food, this 

 is a sign of indigestion, and indicates that the food must be 

 changed, if the bird is to live much longer. 



The best way to keep a Eobin Redbreast, is to let him have 

 the run of the house during the winter, he will often volun- 

 tarily establish himself in the kitchen or parlour, if not fright- 

 ened on his fii'st entrance by attempts to catch him, which he, 

 not unnaturally, resents, for they look like, and might be for 

 anything he knows to the contrary, designs upon his life. 

 JN'o, let him alone, and he will soon become familiar, eating 

 at the table with the rest of the family, and sleeping snugly 

 at the top of the window curtains: should he fly away in 

 spring, he will return, if alive, as soon as the cold weather 

 sets in, and enliven the fireside with his pretty little song 

 during the long dark winter evenings. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE WETNECK. 



THE charming but not very well known species that forms 

 the subject of the present chapter, is about one of the 

 nicest birds I know to make a pet of. A year or two before 

 I left la Bretagne, our gardener, an old soldier by the way, 

 and the successor of Marie Baudoin, whom my mother had 

 taken into the house as indoor servant, brought me a strange 

 looking little bird, which he had picked up on the road one 

 morning on his way to work. 



