Tlie Whitethroat. 55 



will do very well, and reward his owner for all tlie care and 

 attention bestowed upon him. 



Unsuitable food, foremost among which is hemp seed, crushed 

 or whole, will soon bring on decline; in which case the poor 

 bird will not unfrequently fail and die with astonishing ra- 

 pidity. With care, however, as I have already observed, the 

 Blackcap may be kept in the house for a number of years; 

 in Madeira it is almost the only bird so kept; but if not 

 well attended to and fed, and guarded from cold, it will not 

 survive its capture many months. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE WHITETHEOAT. 



THIS pretty and delicate little bird was one of the com- 

 monest residents in our old garden en Bretagne, where 

 it rivalled the Sparrows in familiarity, and the Blackcap, not 

 to mention the Mghtingales that inhabited the beech copse at 

 the end of our domain, in song. 



Properly speaking, I ought not to include this bird in the 

 present volume, for I cannot say that I have ever actually 

 kept it. I have tried to do so more than once, but without 

 success, and, at last, my mother peremptorily forbid me touching 

 its nest any more; a prohibition which my ill-luck, on several 

 occasions, inclined me the more readily to respect: for the 

 "Whitethroat is a much more delicate bird that its black bonneted 

 relative, and even, I have been assured, than the Kightingale, 

 which was held sacred in the grounds of the chateau, if not 

 outside our walls. 



The Whitethroat, Sylvia hortensis of Linneeus, la Fauvette 

 grise of the French, and die grails GrasmiicJce of German 

 writers, is a bird of passage, arriving earlier, and departing 

 later than the Blackcap. Like that bird it feeds on insects. 



