NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 95 



then dried slowly; they can afterwards be damped and mixed 

 up in the birds' food. Dried ants' eggs, as sold at the bird- 

 shops, might serve the same purpose. When birds are on 

 board ship and want green meat, mustard and cress seeds 

 should be grown on the waste sand from the cages. Mr. 

 Clarence Bartlett lately went to India with a large number of 

 birds. 



Eixo-OusEL, p. 109." The King-Ousel," writes Mr. G. Napier, 

 " breeds, in April, in the northern and more elevated parts of 

 England and Scotland, as Northumberland, Yorkshire, and the 

 Cheviot Hills. The nest resembles that of the blackbird, but is 

 more usually built on the ground, and amongst the heather or 

 cliffs, than the nest of the blackbird. The eggs greatly resemble 

 those of the blackbird, but are usually a good deal smaller. They 

 have a larger proportion of ash-coloured spots than is common 

 with eggs of the blackbird ; but some varieties resemble them 

 exactly, so that it would not be safe to discriminate between the 

 species from mere appearance. The same may be said of the 

 eggs of the redwing and fieldfare." 



The King-Ousel has been sometimes known to breed near 

 Derby ; they are wonderful birds for mountain-ash berries ; 

 they come from the north of Scotland ; they are found in 

 small flocks, feeding with red-wings, thrushes, and black- 

 birds, on any kind of berry from October to March ; their 

 habits are the same as those of the blackbird ; they breed in 

 Norway and Sweden ; they are caught, as a rule, off the moun- 

 tain-ash ; they are not uncommon in winter months ; the eggs 

 are scarce in this country. It has been stated that the ring-ouzel 

 departs at the end of October. Mr. Davy says that every year 

 he has the ring-ouzel brought to him up to Christmas, and also 

 in the early spring ; he concludes that they remain here with 

 blackbirds and thrushes all the winter. Mr. Edon, curator of 

 my fish museum and taxidermist, informs me that the ring-ouzel 

 is very common about Castletown or Castleton, the peak of 

 Derbyshire. " I was once collecting ferns on the Winnits a 

 name given to some rocks standing between Maur Tor, or the 

 Shivering Mountain, and the Devil's Hole it was there amongst 

 these rocks that I first saw and heard the ring-ouzel ; it is very 

 common there. I have only once known it to be seen in 

 the neighbourhood of London and that was about four years 

 ago, when I had one, a female, brought to me ; it was shot in 

 the neighbourhood of Kilburn Park." The ring-ouzel is said to 

 breed every year in the west of Somerset, in the Exmoor part 

 of the county, and in Devonshire, both on Exmoor and Dartmoor. 



