32 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



rule, hatches five birds, yet the number of blackbirds does 

 not increase. So that if we say there are only ten thousand 

 pairs of blackbirds in Great Britain, there are at least fifty 

 thousand killed or made away with every year. " Then, what 

 are they hatched /or?" my child-friend might ask. *' For 

 cats " would be my reply. And yet it seems absurd that a 

 hundred thousand blackbirds should be hatched every year 

 just for cats to eat. All of which is a mystery to me. 



It is noteworthy of this charming bird that it is an emblem 

 of cultivation, as the sparrow is of civilisation. Savages only 

 are exempt from the sparrow : only barren land from the 

 blackbird. As soon as a garden is laid out, a hedge set, an 

 orchard planted, the blackbird comes. Except within easy 

 flicrht of land that man has tended, it is i\ot found. Its nest, 

 again, has a curious point in its favour, for it is so well built 

 — being a cup of mud strongly felted with moss and grass both 

 inside and out — and, as a rule, in such a sheltered spot that it 

 lasts through the winter, and mice are often glad, when their 

 tenements underground become uncomfortable, to occupy 

 them. At other times, too, they serve them admirably for 

 store-rooms and larders. One blackbird's nest that I knew 

 of, built into some very dense ivy in an angle of a wall, was 

 a squirrel's garden-house ; not its regular home, for that was 

 up in the pine-tree overhead, but a pleasure retreat for empty 

 hours. But a vagabond rat turned it out, and made a " doss- 

 house " of it, 



