THE LINNET. 8 3 



through soap-suds, a clear note escaping at the end of the phrase through bubble 

 and sputter "chick, chick, achock ; chick chicka-chick, chick; chick, chick, achoo" ; more- 

 over, half a dozen Linnets quarrelling sound nearly as well as one Linnet singing. 

 For clearness and vigour not a note in the song of Acanthis cannabina will compare 

 with the joyous, though somewhat monotonous, song of the Chaffinch : of course I 

 am aware that this is rank heresy ; but heresy is often truth. Howard Saunders 

 observes that "it is the capacity for learning the notes of other birds which makes 

 the Linnet so great a favourite for the cage " : perhaps he is right ; but, although 

 I have never been without the species since I first began to keep birds, often 

 having as many as six or eight cock Linnets at the same time, I never observed 

 any capacity for mimicry in any of my specimens : even the three males now in 

 my possession, which have been flying together in the same aviary for more than 

 four years, still sing nothing beyond their natural wild song. That nestling 

 Linnets will learn a song of another bird if kept separate from examples of their 

 own species, as recorded by Sterland (Vide Charles Witchell's " Evolution of Bird- 

 song," p. 1 70) * is not remarkable ; but it does not account for the caging of many 

 thousands of adult Linnets yearly. 



Linnets are known to be largely migratory, and Seebohm observes : "Although 

 the Linnet is a resident in this country it is probable that many, if not most of 

 the birds of the year join the flocks of this species that pass our islands every 

 autumn, and migrate further south with them." 



The food of the Linnet consists principally of seeds of dock, plantain, dandelion, 

 groundsel, thistle, etc., and it is fond of hemp, oats, and turnip seed. Probably 

 when feeding its young it also eats aphides and small caterpillars. In confinement 

 German rape, Canary, and oats are the best seeds on which to feed it. Why the 

 last-mentioned very wholesome and cheap seed is so seldom used by aviculturists 

 I cannot understand, unless they imagine that the smaller hard-billed birds are 

 unable to crack it : this, of course, is a very mistaken notion, for most seed-eating 

 birds, including Canaries, are very fond of oats. 



When hand-reared, Linnets become extremely tame ; but, if they are to be 

 kept so, they must be caged separately ; for association in an aviary with other 

 birds, renders them as wild as caught specimens in a few days ; a fact which I 

 proved first in 1886, and have since been able to confirm. It is also a mistake to 

 trust the rearing of caged nestlings to the parent birds: I tried this in 1887, 

 hanging up the cage in a tree near the nest from which I had removed the 

 young. The old birds are willing enough to feed their young in a cage, but the 



* In my opinion the Linnet mentioned in the same work (p. 172) as warbling the songs of the lllackcap 

 and Wren, must also have been a nestling when caged. 



