AMERICAN ANIMALS. 125 



last letter, you will find that many species continued to warble 

 after the beginning of July. 



The titlark and yellowhammer breed late, the latter very late ; 

 and therefore it is no wonder that they protract their song : for 

 I lay it down as a maxim in ornithology, that as long as there is 

 any incubation going on there is music. As to the redbreast 

 and wren, it is well known to the most incurious observer that 

 they whistle the year round, hard frost excepted; especially the 

 latter. 



It was not in my power to procure you a black-cap, or a less 

 reed-sparrow, or sedge-bird, alive. As the first is undoubtedly, 

 and the last, as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of passage, 

 they would require more nice and curious management in a cage 

 than I should be able to give them :* they are both distinguished 

 songsters. The note of the former has such a wild sweetness 

 that it always brings to my mind those lines in a song in " As 

 You Like It." 



" And tune his merry note 

 Unto the wild bird's throat." SHAKSPKAKE. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the 

 song of several other birds; but then it has also a hurrying 



* I have never experienced much difficulty in keeping any of our insectivorous birds in confine- 

 ment, although at different times I have possessed, with very few exceptions, the whole of them. 

 The nightingale, redstart, furze-chats, and common wren are about the most delicate, or rather 

 these require the most nutritious food ; after them may be mentioned the fallow-chat, the reed- 

 lings, the swallows, the pettychaps genus, the wagtails, and the rose-mufflin ; and amongst the 

 most hardy may be reckoned the pipits (more particularly the A. arboreus), the different fauvets, 

 the furzelin, the hedge-dunnock, aifd the robin, all which last-mentioned birds may be very 

 easily maintained in confinement at a small expense. Generally speaking, our summer visitants 

 are not more tender of cold weather than a Canary bird, our little residents, the wren and kinglet, 

 requiring greater care ra winter; next to these maybe mentioned the different pettychaps ; while 

 decidedly the most hardy of cold of any are the blackcap-fauvet and the tree-pipit, several of both 

 which 1 have known to have been kept through a moderate winter in a very cold room without a 

 fire, which destroyed a variety of other migrant birds. A very good general food which all these 

 birds, excepting the nightingale, will readily eat, and which requires but little trouble to prepare, 

 and will keep good for nearly a month, may be made by adding to about half a pound of the 

 " German paste" of the bird-shops three or four ounces of crushed hempseed and four or five 

 stale buns, crumbled, but not too small. Some chopped egg may also occasionally be given, and 

 a little meat, either dressed or raw, and there should be always some bread and milk in the cage. 

 Boiled vegetables, too, and in short whatever else is brought to table that is not salted, may occa- 

 sionally be supplied; for they will subsist on almost every description of human food, and thrive 

 most when their diet is a little diversified. The fauvet genus may be kept during the fruit season 

 almost wholly upon fruit, and at all times of the year grocers' currants are with them a favourite 

 food. Insects should of course be given whenever practicable. A nightingale should always have 

 access to two food pans, one of bread and milk, which it soon learns to eat when hungry, and 

 becomes extremely fond of, the other of raw beef and egg, the former scraped, so as to obtain the 

 substance of it, leaving the fibres, and then chopped up with the egg, which should be boiled hard : 

 the latter food alone, without the bread and milk, is too stimulating, but is probably the most 

 nutritious that could be given. Excepting in very cold weather, these birds should always have 

 a pan of water to bathe in. ED. 



