68 Birds I Have Kept. 



one to take the trouble to keep these birds; their attractive 

 qualities are about nil, in the aviary at all events; and if 

 they are possessed of any, it is when hopping about the streets, 

 but certainly not when swooping down in their hundreds 

 from the house-top to pilfer the chickens' food. 



The Sparrow has been recently introduced into Australia, 

 Kew Zealand, and the United States, and has made himself 

 so perfectly at home there, that he is now looked upon in 

 the light of a nuisance in them all. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE BLACKBIRD. 



THE Blackbird was a common bird in Brittany, breeding 

 everywhere about the place, and singing from early dawn 

 to dewy eve; but I am obliged to say that he was not appre- 

 ciated, as perhaps he deserved to be, for his unintermitting 

 attention to our fruit and vegetable gardens made him some 

 enemies in our household; my father, to wit, who, enraged 

 by '* blacky' s" constant depredations, and especially by the 

 loss of some choice peaches which he w^as reserving, specially, 

 for a favoured visitor, set a price upon the poor bird's head, 

 which, I regret to say, Marie Baudoin, and afterwards le 

 lonlwmme Mendel, were only too ready to earn: so that I 

 cried over nest after nest of greenish blue eggs, thickly speckled 

 and streaked with blackish brown, which, by some, to me, 

 mysterious means were again and again spirited away, when 

 I believed that they were known to none but myself and 

 the parent birds. 



The Blackbird, Turdus merula in Latin, le Merle in French, 

 and der Schwarzdrossel in German, is a large bird, nine and a 

 half inches in length, of which the broad tail measures nearly 



