148 Miscellaneous. 



antice plied magnd transversd terminatd ; labro intus valde den- 

 iato-lirato. 

 Hah. ? 



22. Clanculus nodiliratus, A. Adams. C. testa depresso- 

 turbinatd, carneold, liris transversis nodulosis subdistantibus 

 omatd; interstitiis longitudinaliter tenuissime striatis ; anfrac- 

 tibus subquadratis , margine umbilici dentato ; columella recta, 

 antice tuberculo parvo terminatd; labro intus lirato. 



Hah. ? 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Observations on the Breeding of the Nightingale in Captivity. 

 By H. Hanley, Sergeant- Major 1st Life Guards. 



Being of opinion that any bird which breeds in this country in a 

 wild state, might, by studying its habits, be brought to do so in a 

 state of captivity, I made preparations during the winter of 1844 for 

 trying the Nightingale, which I considered to be the most retired in 

 its habits of any of our summer visitants. I had a cage made, 4 feet 

 long by 3 feet high, the back, ends and top solid, with a wire front, 

 in which I placed a small Scotch fir-tree, planted in a flower-pot ; to 

 each end of the cage I attached a common-sized canary's breeding- 

 cage, commimicating with the large cage by a hole about 4 inches 

 square. I broke a new birch-broom, and filled up the cages at each 

 end, to make them resemble as near as possible 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 

 (Blake, of John-street, Tottenham-court-road), who goes to "Watford 

 every season to catch nightingales, to bring me a cock and hen bird 

 which had paired naturally ; he did so, and, fortunately, 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 enclosing 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 a 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 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. 

 — Proc. Zool. Soc. June 10, 1851. 



