JUNE. 95 



THE LINNET'S GOOD AND BAD POINTS. 



Besides the noisy young sparrows, missel thrushes, 

 and starlings, whole companies of new-fledged linnets 

 make music in and around the gorse-clad hollows 

 where they were born, while their parents are busy 

 with their second nests. Some birds, for example 

 the wren, keep their nests so scrupulously clean that 

 one is inclined to wonder that they should not always 

 use them for a second brood, instead of going through 

 all the trouble of weaving so elaborate a structure 

 over again. But there is no room for such wonder 

 in the case of the linnet, for the little birds are allowed 

 by their parents to make the nest so terribly dirty 

 that every member of the family should be ashamed 

 to pass that way afterwards and see it. But we need 

 not go further than humanity to find beings who 

 have no shame in such matters, and even seem to 

 prefer a dirty home to a clean one. So we must not 

 blame the linnet, who is such a dapper little gentle- 

 man in dress and manners. Besides, he has a voice 

 which, though small, is so faultless in music that one 

 might class him as the drawing-room amateur in a 

 bird company, where the nightingale would be a 

 famous tenor, the blackbird a street ballad-singer, 

 and the starling a comic vocalist, who occasionally 

 gives evidence of powers that would make his fortune 

 if he would only abandon his patter songs and tricks 

 of mimicry, and take to serious music. 



