BLACKCAP BIRDS IN CAGES. 143 



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." SHAKSPEARE. 



The latter has a surprising variety of notes, re- 

 sembling the song of several other birds ; but 

 then it has also a hurrying manner, not at all to 

 its advantage. It is, notwithstanding, a delicate 

 polyglot. 



It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in 

 the night; perhaps only caged birds do so. I 

 once knew a tame red-breast in a cage that always 

 sang as long as candles were in the room ; but in 

 their wild state no one supposes they sing in the 

 night. 



I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that 

 there are to be seen much fewer birds in July than 

 in any former month, notwithstanding so many 

 young are hatched daily. Sure I am, that it is far 

 otherwise with respect to the swallow tribe, which 

 increases prodigiously as the summer advances ; 

 and I saw, at the time mentioned, many hundreds 

 of young wagtails on the banks of the Cherwell, 

 which almost covered the meadows. If the matter 

 appears, as you say, in the other species, may 

 it not be owing to the dams being engaged in 

 incubation, while the young are concealed by the 

 leaves ? 



Many times have I had the curiosity to open the 

 stomach of woodcocks and snipes; but nothing 

 ever occurred that helped to explain to me what 



