68 Bird-keeping, 



birds' cries for food, the latter must be fed with a quill 

 every hour, and reared by hand. A gentleman who 

 has been very successful in his treatment of Nightin- 

 gales, and says that he has not eaten a Christmas 

 dinner for twenty years without the Nightingales' song, 

 fed them entirely on scraped raw beef and hard-boiled 

 egg, mixed with water, and made fresh every morning ; 

 and on this food his birds brought up a nest of young 

 ones in a cage. Finding the odour of the cage offen- 

 sive, he tried subsequently to feed his Nightingales on 

 hard-boiled egg and German paste, for which his recipe 

 was 7 Ibs. of pea-meal, 2 Ibs. coarse Scotch oatmeal, 



1 Ib. moist sugar, i y 2 Ibs. beef dripping, i Ib. honey, 



2 quarts hemp-seed, and i pint maw-seed. The drip- 

 ping and honey were melted together in a saucepan, 

 and the meal and sugar well rubbed in, so as to leave 

 no lumps in the paste ; then the hemp-seed, crushed, 

 and the maw-seed were added to it, and, when cool, 

 it was put into an earthen jar. A teacup-full of the 

 paste was mixed every morning with a hard-boiled 

 egg, all, white and yolk, pressed through a fine wire 

 sieve. This was sufficient for five or six soft-billed 

 birds, and on this the Nightingales throve well. 



Another successful rearer of Nightingales, to whom 

 I am indebted for much interesting information on the 

 subject, tells me that he finds a paste made of pea- 

 meal, egg, maw-seed, and sugar answer very well with 

 his birds, but he gives them also beef and egg as before 



