492 FRINGILLID.E. 



hcatl, a firelock on its shoulder, and a match in its claw, and 

 discharged a small cannon. The same bird also acted as if it 

 had been wounded. It was wheeled in a barrow, to convey 

 it, as it were, to the hospital ; after which it flew away before 

 the company. The seventh turned a kind of windmill ; and 

 the last bird stood in the midst of some fireworks which were 

 discharged all round it, and this without exhibiting the least 

 symptom of fear. 



In spring, and the early part of summer, the Goldfinch fre- 

 quents gardens and orchards. Hurdis, in his Evening Walk, 

 says — 



" 1 love to see the Goldfinch twit and twit, 

 And pick the groundsel's feathered seeds ; 

 And then in bower of apple blossom perched, 

 Trim his gay suit, and pay us with a song." 



The Goldfinch builds a very neat nest, which is sometimes 

 fixed in an apple or pear tree ; occasionally in a hedge, or 

 thick bush in a small copse, or an evergreen in a plantation. 

 A nest now before me is formed on the outside with fine 

 twigs of fir, green grass bents, fine roots, some wool, and 

 several pieces of white worsted, curiously interwoven toge- 

 ther ; lined with willow down, feathers, and numerous long 

 hairs. It has been well observed, " that birds will in general 

 take the materials for building which they can most easily 

 procure." Bolton, in the preface to his Harmonia Riiralis, 

 says, " I observed a pair of Goldfinches beginning to make 

 their nest in my garden, on the 10th of May 1792; they 

 had formed the groundwork with moss, grass, &c. as usual ; 

 but on my scattering small parcels of avooI in diftVrent parts 

 of the garden, they in a great measure left off the use of their 

 own stuflP, and employed the wool. Afterwards I gave them 

 cotton, on which they rejected the wool, and proceeded with 

 the cotton ; the third day I supplied them with fine down, 

 on which they forsook both the other, and finished their work 

 with this last article. The nest, when completed, was some- 



