WARBLERS. 



These are soft-billed birds, feeding almost entirely 

 on insects. They are mostly birds of passage, and are 

 very difficult to rear and preserve in health, requiring 

 very great care and attention to their individual pecu- 

 liarities. Amongst them are our sweetest songsters, 

 yet I do not advocate keeping them in confinement : 

 their migratory habits make them restless at certain 

 seasons, and unless one has the time to devote oneself 

 to them, and can succeed in gaining their hearts so 

 completely as to make up to them for the loss of their 

 natural companions and of their liberty, one cannot 

 be secure of their happiness. In the winter too, when 

 their instinct leads them to resort to warmer climates, 

 they suffer much from cold, unless they can have an 

 habitation of which the temperature is regulated at a 

 certain heat, while fresh air and sunshine are admitted. 

 Even those who have kept Nightingales, as they assert, 

 for several years in health and full song, admit that 

 after five or six years they sing less constantly and 

 sweetly; but say that, if set at liberty then, in the month 

 of May, they will be so invigorated as to recover all 



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