THE FINCHES 133 



swallowing the dejecta 1 which would otherwise accumulate within 

 or about the nest, ensure its comfort and cleanliness. To this 

 laudable custom, however, the goldfinch, though so pretty a bird, 

 would seem to be an exception, at least as far as the outside of 

 the nest is concerned, and, as a penalty, is constrained to provide 

 a new one for her second brood. 2 A similar and still graver 

 laxity, extending to the actual dwelling apartment, has been re- 

 marked in the greenfinch, 3 but there is reason to hope that here 

 the taint has been individual only, and that the family, as a whole, 

 are not involved in the disgrace, though they cannot quite escape 

 the odium of it. 



With these main facts of finch nursery economy it will be well to 

 stop, for though they by no means exhaust the subject being like the 

 walls of a yet unfurnished elegant apartment yet to describe at all 

 detailedly, as such delicate fretwork requires to be, all that atmo- 

 sphere of care and attention in which they are, so to speak, set all 

 the little ways, mannerisms, tendernesses, elegancies, prettinesses 

 which coruscate and play about them would be too long, if not too 

 hopeless, a task. There is, however, an allied branch of the subject, 

 on which, though less popular, some words may be said. Whilst much 

 praise has been lavished on the care and solicitude with which birds 

 feed their young, on the beauty and tenderness of the picture (as 

 lately insisted on in the imagined case of the hawfinch), another kind 

 of feeding not parental, but conjugal has been left comparatively 

 unsung. Male birds, of various species and families, are accustomed 

 to feed their mates in the nesting season, and, amongst them, several 

 of our British finches as the bullfinch, goldfinch, hawfinch are to 

 be prominently commended in this respect. They acquired the habit 

 probably (or let us say perhaps) through helping their wives in the 

 nursery, and, as the family grew, placed her upon the same footing. 

 Having got to this, some rested satisfied and went no farther, but 



1 To be rejected, says Naumaiin, afterwards. 



2 H. A. Macpherson, Fauna of Lakeland, p. 134. 



3 Both Hudson and Boraston, I think, mention this. 



