THE NIGHTINGALE 17 
creepers trained round the veranda of a cottage. I have seen it 
also placed in a niche in a wall intended for the reception of a vase, 
in a bee-hive stored away on the rafters of an outhouse, and under 
a wisp of straw accidentally left on the ground in a garden. It is 
usually composed of dry leaves, roots, bents, and moss, lined with 
hair and wool, and contains five or six eggs. The young birds are 
of a brown tint, and have the feathers tipped with yellow, which 
gives them a spotted appearance. Until they acquire the red breast, 
they are very unlike the parents, and might be mistaken for young 
Thrushes, except that they are much smaller. They may be often 
observed in gardens for many days after they have left the nest, 
keeping together, perching in the bushes, and clamorous for food, 
which the old birds bring to them from time to time. It is said, 
that only one brood is reared in a year, but this I am inclined 
to doubt, having observed in the same locality families of young 
birds early in the spring, and late in the summer of the same year. 
Towards the end of August, the young birds acquire the distinctive 
plumage of their species, and are solitary in their habits until the 
succeeding spring. The call-notes of the Redbreast are numerous, 
and vary beyond the power of description in written words ; the song 
is loud, and it is needless to say, pleasing, and possesses the charm 
of being continued when all our other feathered songsters are mute. 
The red of the breast often has a brighter tint, it is occasionally 
almost a carmine red. The late Lord Lilford told the editor such 
were often birds that had been bred on the Continent. Numbers 
of young birds come across the sea to us each autumn, 
THE NIGHTINGALE 
DAULIAS LUSCI{NIA 
Upper plumage russet brown; tail bright rust-red; under plumage buffish 
white; flanks pale ash colour. Length six and a quarter inches ; 
breadth nine and a half inches. Eggs uniform olive-brown. 
THE southern, eastern, and some of the midland counties of Eng- 
land, enjoy a privilege which is denied to the northern and western 
—an annual visit, namely, from the Nightingale. It is easy enough 
to understand why a southern bird should bound its travels north- 
wards by a certain parallel, but why it should keep aloof from 
Devon and Cornwall, the climate of which approaches more closely 
to that of its favourite continental haunts than many of the districts 
to which it unfailingly resorts, is not so clear. Several reasons 
have been assigned—one, that cowslips do not grow in these coun- 
ties ; this may be dismissed at once as purely fanciful; another 
is, that the soil is too rocky: this is not founded on fact, for both 
Devon and Cornwall abound in localities which would be to Nightin- 
gales a perfect Paradise, if they would only come; a third is, that 
the proper food is not to be found there: but this reason cannot 
B.RB. Cc 
