290 SOFT-BILLED BIRDS, 



crickets, and cockchafers : the large white grubs of the 

 latter are in some years very plentiful ; they may be kept 

 in pots of turfy earth in a cellar, or other cool place, as 

 may also the maggots of the bluebottle fly. Ants' eggs 

 procured in the summer may also be stored for winter use, 

 and every kind of grubs or small caterpillars which can be 

 obtained. Mr. Sweet, who devoted great attention to the 

 Sylviadce, or soft-billed genus of birds, of which he wrote 

 a history, says that the general food which he gave them 

 was hemp-seed, bruised up in boiling water as small as it 

 could be, mixed in equal proportions with bread, free from 

 salt, previously soaked in boiling water. With this moist 

 paste was mixed about the same quantity of raw, lean, 

 fresh meat, cut very small. Besides this he gave his birds 

 the yolk of hard boiled egg, crumbled or cut into small 

 pieces. One egg he considered enough for twenty birds 

 with other food. For all cage birds that will eat it, egg is 

 good as a change of diet. 



The Hon. and Eev. W. Herbert, for birds of this class, 

 recommends boiled carrot or beet-root, mashed and mois- 

 tened. ' A boiled carrot,' he says, ' will keep fresh many 

 days in a basin of cold water ; and is an excellent substi- 

 tute for fruit. Boiled cabbage, cauliflower, and green peas 

 are good for them ; all sorts of puddings, a very little 

 roast meat minced, I give them every day, and a little yolk 

 of egg when it suits, but it is not necessary.' In the way 

 of fruit, he gives ripe pears, currants, cherries, elder, privet, 

 and honeysuckle berries. He does not approve of milk 

 as food. Professor Eennie found this latter act well as a 

 medicine. He gave it to the Blackcap and other birds 

 when they appeared drooping or sickly, with manifest 

 advantage. 



When grown-up Nightingales are caught and caged, they 

 will sometimes refuse to eat the food offered to them in 

 the form of paste, it being so different from that to which 

 they had been accustomed. An ingenious device for in- 

 ducing them to take this food, and thus ' meating them 

 off,' as it is called, is resorted to by the bird dealers. In a 

 saucer, or other convenient vessel, is placed some of the 

 paste, and on this in the centre, under an inverted wine 



