48 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



native for him, perhaps, from hunting cats in the shrubbery 

 with his sister and the terriers; but abroad the matter is 

 different. In Italy and Spain the orange groves and olive 

 wastes are depopulated of useful small birds, as we have 

 seen, and Gould, in his "Birds of Great Britain," gives 

 a graphic account of " La Tenderie " in Belgium. " The 

 thrush is a great source of amusement to the middle and of 

 profit to the lower classes during its autumnal migration. 

 Many families of Liege, Luxemburg, Luneberg, Narum, 

 parts of Hainault and Brabant, choose this season for their 

 period of relaxation from business, and devote themselves 

 to the taking of this bird with horse-hair springes. The 

 shopkeeper of Liege and Yerviers, whose house in the town 

 is the model of comfort and cleanliness, resorts with his wife 

 and children to one or two rooms in a miserable country 

 village to enjoy the sport he has been preparing for with 

 their help during the long evenings of the preceding winter, 

 in the course of which he has made as many as from five 

 thousand to ten thousand horse-hair springes, and prepared 

 as many pieces of flexible wood rather thicker than a 

 swan quill, in and on which to hang them. He hires what 

 he calls his Tenderie, being from four to five acres of 

 underwood about three to five years old, pays some thirty 

 shillings for permission to place his springes, and his 

 greatest ambition is to retain for several years the same 

 Tenderie and the same lodging, which he improves in 

 comfort from year to year. The springes being made, 

 and the season of migration near, he goes for a day 

 to his intended place of sojourn, and cuts as many twigs, 

 about eighteen inches in length, as he intends hanging 

 springes on. There are two methods of hanging them: in 

 one the twig is bent into the form of the figure 6, the 

 tail end running through a slit cut in the upper part of 

 the twig. The other method is to sharpen a twig at both 

 ends, and insert the points into a grower, or stem of under- 

 wood, thus forming a bow, of which the stem forms the 



