60 WILD LIFE AT HOME. 



in consequence. My brother immediately bought a 

 supply of the very strongest purchasable, and 

 placing a quantity of it in several small bottles 

 without corks, we buried them right up to their 

 necks near the remaining robins' nests, a hedge- 

 sparrow's, and a blackbird's, Avhich were all within 

 fifty yards of each other, and all of which escaped. 

 I should much have liked to see the cat that came 

 in for a sniff of that ammonia, and have known 

 its candid opinion of the sensations caused thereby. 

 I got one myself by accident whilst trying to imi- 

 tate a cat creeping along the dry ditch bottom, 

 and it very nearly knocked me over on my back. 



The pair of robins that had been driven from 

 the jam-pot soon built another nest twenty-five 

 yards further along the same ditch, and only two 

 feet away from the blackbird's nest mentioned 

 above. Here they succeeded in bringing off a 

 brood of five chicks in safety. I then tore the lid 

 off an old biscuit-box, which I found on a rubbish 

 heap in a field hard by, and placed it on its side 

 within a few feet of the disused nest. It was 

 difficult to keep in position on account of its light- 

 ness and the springiness of the slender branches 

 upon which it was resting, so I planted an old 

 boot on the top by way of ballast. In about a 

 month's time a pair of redbreasts discovered it 

 and made a nest in it, and we photographed the 

 hen sitting on her eggs, as shown in our illustration 

 on page 63. 



