BIRDS IN CAGES. 109 



the first is undoubtedly, and the last, as far as I can 

 yet see, a summer bird of passage, they would require 

 more nice and curious management in a cage than I 

 should be able to give them : they are both distin- 

 guished songsters. The note of the former has such 

 a wild sweetness that it always brings to my mind 

 those lines in a song in "As You Like It :" 



" And tune his merry note 

 Unto the wild bird's throat." 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes, resem- 

 bling the song of several other birds ; but then it 

 has also a hurrying manner, not at all to its advan- 

 tage. It is, notwithstanding, a delicate polyglot. 



It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the 

 night ; perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew 

 a tame red-breast in a cage that always sang as long 

 as candles were in the room; but in their wild state 

 no one supposes they sing in the night. 



I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that 

 there are to be seen much fewer birds in July than in 

 any former month, notwithstanding so many young 

 are hatched daily. Sure I am, that it is far other- 

 wise with respect to the swallow tribe, which increases 

 prodigiously as the summer advances : and I saw, at 

 the time mentioned, many hundreds of young wag- 

 tails on the banks of the Cher well, which almost 

 covered the meadows. If the matter appears, as you 

 say, in the other species, may it not be owing to the 

 dams being engaged in incubation, while the young 

 are concealed by the leaves ? 



Many times have I had the curiosity to open the 

 stomachs of woodcocks and snipes ; but nothing ever 

 occurred that helped to explain to me what their sub- 

 sistence might be ; all that I could ever find was a soft 

 mucus, among which lay many pellucid small gravels. 



