324 SYLVIAD^l. 



cages at each, end, to make them resemble, as near as pos- 

 sible, the bottom of a thick hedge, and then put in a 

 plentiful supply of withered oak-leaves and moss, of which 

 the Nightingale forms its nest, covering the fronts of the 

 two small cages with green glazed calico. I placed the 

 cages high up against a wall facing a landing window. 

 The following spring, that is, about the latter end of April, 

 1845, I directed a bird-catcher to bring me a cock and 

 hen bird which had paired naturally ; he did so, and, for- 

 tunately, they meated off very readily. By * meating off,' 

 I mean that such birds as live on insect food will not 

 peck at dead food until taught to do so, which is effected 

 by inclosing meal-worms in a small glass tube, corked up 

 at each end, and then placing the tube in their food ; on 

 pecking at the worm, the beak slips off the glass amidst 

 the food, which they swallow, and will afterwards go to it 

 without the aid of the tube. On finding my birds feed 

 freely in the small cage, in which until then, I had confined 

 them, I turned them into the place I had fitted up for 

 them, and was much gratified, about a week afterwards, 

 to observe the hen bird flying about with an oak-leaf in 

 her beak. She made her nest in one of the small cages 

 at the end of the large one ; laid four eggs, of which she 

 hatched and brought up three young ones. During the 

 time she was sitting, the cock bird sang as well and as loud 

 as I ever heard one in a wild state : when the young were 

 excluded he left off singing, and was most assiduous in 

 assisting to feed and rear them." 



M. Nilsson says that the Nightingale arrives in Sweden 

 by the 1st of May ; and Pennant, in his Arctic Zoology, 

 says this bird visits the temperate parts of Russia, and some 

 parts of Siberia. It breeds in Germany, France, Spain, 

 Provence, and Italy ; but leaves even the most southern 

 parts of this last-named country by the end of September, 



