NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 99 



of the flesh is boiled and used to feed the young ducks ; they 

 thrive wonderfully upon it. 



There is a legend in this neighbourhood that an old woman, 

 who was bedridden, used to get a livelihood by hatching out 

 early ducks. She had an immense bed in which she hatched 

 out the ducks by the warmth under the bed-clothes. 



NIGHTINGALE (P. luscinia), p. 122. "This bird," Mr. Napier 

 writes, " breeds from the beginning of May till the middle of 

 June. It lays from four to six eggs, which are usually of a uni- 

 form olive brown or green, varying in shade. They are sometimes 

 of a blue green, entirely covered with spots of olive brown, at 

 other times of a clear blue green, with blood spots. The nest is 

 commonly formed of oak or beech leaves, and grasses inter- 

 mixed, and lined with tine grasses or hair ; a nest I have is 

 formed almost entirely of moss, but contains a few oak-leaves 

 and grasses ; it is also lined with a few horse-hairs. The night- 

 ingale is found in Gloucestershire, Wilts, Sussex, Hants, Kent, 

 Surrey, Middlesex, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Hunts, and many 

 other counties. The first nest of the nightingale I ever found 

 was in Sussex." 



Mr. Davy informs me that the earliest place for nightingales 

 is "Welwyn in Hertfordshire, where they arrive as early as 

 the 10th of April ; in other places they come usually about 

 the 14th. Bird-catchers, when they go out expressly for 

 nightingales, carry with them scraped meat and eggs, and 

 cram the birds about two hours after they are caught, and 

 repeat the cramming several times during the day. The old 

 birds are sometimes very difficult to " meat off," they will put 

 up with any punishment rather than feed. Nightingales are not 

 known in Derby or Yorkshire. Mr. Davy has frequently sent 

 these birds in pairs to both places. The late Sir Charles Slingsby 

 used to take a dozen pairs of nightingales at a time in the hopes 

 of acclimatising them at Knaresborough in Yorkshire. On one 

 occasion nightingales bred there, the keeper found a nest and 

 eggs, but on the whole this experiment has not succeeded. The 

 reason why nightingales are not found in many districts, such 

 as Scotland, Devonshire, Cornwall, is that their proper insect 

 food is not there. The food of the nightingale consists of small 

 beetles and any sort of fleshy caterpillars, not hairy caterpillars. 

 It is stated by some that the nightingale will feed on the glow- 

 worms at night, but this is a mistake ; the bird when once settled 

 down after dark, never moves from his lodging unless disturbed. 

 Any person by starting one or two nightingales singing in a road 



