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THE THRUSHES. (oO 
be liberally supplied. I should recommend no one to 
keep a Nightingale who cannot rely on a sufficient 
‘supply of small grasshoppers, white-ants, &c., to keep 
the bird almost entirely on such food. The European 
Nightingale has been bred in captivity in England, and 
I have little doubt that the Persian bird would breed in 
India, as I have received accounts of hen birds laying 
eggs when kept alone in cages. 
As these birds nest in woods on the ground, using dead 
leaves, the best way to get them to breed would be to put 
a tame pair in a large cage about six feet square, well 
supplied with bushy branches stuck in the ground, 
which should be partly covered with turf, watered from 
outside to keep it fresh, and partly witha thick bedding 
-of dead leaves. A very liberal supply of insects should 
be kept up. Indeed, it would be a good plan to make 
the sides of the cage of wire gauze of the coarse kind (in 
‘fine gauze the birds would catch their claws) and let in a 
lot of assorted insects every day for the birds to catch 
naturally. They would not need cleaning in a cage of 
the size, and the bath, food, &c., could easily be put in 
‘by a small door. It would be worth taking a great deal 
of trouble to domesticate this superb songster, which, after 
‘so many centuries, still maintains, with all nations who 
know it, its reputation as the most melodious of wild living 
things. For acclimatization abroad I should expect the 
Persian Nightingale to be a more suitable subject than 
the European species, as it does not appear to undertake 
long migrations as these do. I say these, because there 
-are two species of Nightingales in Europe, the Western 
