Blue Thrushes 45 



before they leave for more northerly climes to breed — 

 their full song I mean — for in this instance the Passera 

 was singing loudly. 



The female is altogether of a duller colouring than 

 her mate, being darkish brown with a blue-grey ten- 

 dency about the wings and tail. It is curious that a 

 bird inhabiting, as a rule, such wild and solitary places 

 should, when caged, become not only tame, but posi- 

 tively bold, and in many cases defiant and pugnacious. 

 My first acquaintance with this charming creature as 

 a cage bird was in one of those picturesque towns that 

 border on the Lake of Como in Northern Italy, that 

 lake which lies embedded amongst mountains like a 

 beautiful sapphire, where everything that meets the 

 eye is picturesque, lovely, and brilliant ; where in the 

 spring-time nightingales sing, and peach trees and 

 magnolias open out their delicate pink blossoms in 

 the one case, and their waxen white buds in the 

 other ; where church bells clang musically across the 

 water, and pergolas are shadowed over with vines and 

 fig-trees. 



There was, and is still for all I know, a certain 

 little shop — a greengrocer's stall — in the principal 

 street of Menaggio, which street runs down hill all 

 the way to the shore of the lake, and this stall was 

 kept by a portly and imperfect ablutioner, commonly 

 called Pietro, a man with a head like a bullet and a 

 neck like a bull, whose eyes were small and bleared ; 

 in a word, not in personal appearance at all resembling 

 one's beau ideal of the handsome Italian, with the 

 ready stiletto and the flashing black eyes. 



