BRITISH BIRDS. 147 



brown, sprinkled or marbled with spots of a 

 much darker colour. During the time of incu- 

 bation the male sits by turns, he likewise pro- 

 cures the female food, such as flies, worms, and 

 insects. The Black-cap sings sweetly, and so 

 like the Nightingale, that in Norfolk it is called 

 the Mock-Nightingale; it also imitates the Thrush 

 and the Blackbird. Our ingenious countryman, 

 White, observes, that it has usually a full, sweet, 

 deep, loud, and wild pipe, yet the strain is of 

 short continuance, and its motions desultory; but 

 when this bird sits calmly, and in earnest en- 

 gages in song, it pours forth very sweet but 

 inward melody, and expresses great variety of 

 sweet and gentle modulations, superior, perhaps, 

 to any of our warblers, the Nightingale excepted; 

 and, while it warbles, its throat is wonderfully 

 distended. Black-caps feed chiefly on flies and 

 insects, but not unfrequently on ivy and other 

 berries, and the seeds of the evonymus. 



