THE GREEN CARDINAL. 67 



Now this long, but very necessary, digression, has taken ns right 

 away from the Green Cardinal; but if it should prevent some of these 

 grand birds being poisoned, it will have served a good purpose. 



Dr. Russ says that this bird " was first reared in the Zoological 

 Garden in Cologne, and afterwards in many bird-rooms. It nests easily 

 and for the most part with good results, scarcely allows itself to be 

 disturbed by quantities of other birds. Nests always being arranged, a 

 basket or other receptacle, with usually only a layer of rough materials 

 carelessly dragged together by the male bird. Laying four to six 

 eggs, light greenish-blue, speckled and spotted with black brown.* 

 Incubation fourteen days. The male relieves the female and feeds her, 

 but not regularly. Young nourished by both. Young Plumage duller 

 and greyer than that of the female, and below spotted with grey, 

 Thrush-fashion. Not so hardy as other Cardinals, can scarcely put up 

 well with cold and damp together; in other respects after acclima- 

 tization, enduring and strong. Song loud and euphonious, yet 

 monotonous. Malicious towards smaller associates." " Tolerably 

 regularly imported every year, but only in a few pairs or singly." 



In his Fremdlandischcn Stubenvogel Dr. Russ tells us, that a pair of 

 Green Cardinals is scarcely disturbed by larger birds, that in the 

 Berlin Zoological Garden they went to nest in an aviary occupied by 

 fowls, pigeons, and even Glossy Starlings; and in his bird-room 

 succeeded in driving a pair of Bloodrump Parrakeets from the vicinity 

 of their nest. He also says that Major Alexander von Homey er 

 defines the song as loud and euphonious: "spia, spent, spia, spia" 

 (which in English would be " speea, spoit, speea, speea"} a quite 

 improbable sound to come from any bird excepting a Parrot. Try to 

 whistle a word beginning with the consonants sp; take for instance the 

 absurd rendering of a Chaffinch's call-note "spink" and see whether it 

 can be produced either by a human or any other whistled effort. It 

 cannot be done, and never was done, by man or bird: " chich" with a 

 slight metallic //-like sound (quite undefined) before the terminal ch, 

 best represents the note of the Chaffinch; and the sp, in the Cardinal's 

 song is more probably phw, a very common commencement to whistled 

 notes, the p being scarcely sounded, less indeed than in the Scotch 

 pronunciation of which, and other words in which the letters wh stand 

 first. 



* My hen bird in 1894 laid a good mam' pale green eggs, spotted at the larger end with 

 black : she built in an inverted Hartz Canary-cage with the bottom knocked out, so that it 

 formed a kind of deep open basket. In 1895 I was successful in rearing one young bird, but it 

 died when full grown from trusting wholly to its parents to feed it. A.G.B. 



