THE THRUSHES. 73 



be liberally supplied. I should recommend no one to 

 keep a Nightingale who cannot rely on a sufficient 

 supply of small grasshoppers, white-ants, &c., to keep 

 the bird almost entirely on such food. The European 

 Nightingale has been bred in captivity in England, and 

 I have little doubt that the Persian bird would breed in 

 India, as I have received accounts of hen birds laying 

 eggs when kept alone in cages. 



As these birds nest in woods on the ground, using dead 

 leaves, the best way to get them to breed would be to put 

 a tame pair in a large cage about six feet square, well 

 supplied with bushy branches stuck in the ground, 

 which should be partly covered with turf, watered from 

 outside to keep it fresh, and partly with a thick bedding 

 of dead leaves. A very liberal supply of insects should 

 be kept up. Indeed, it would be a good plan to make 

 the sides of the cage of wire gauze of the coarse kind (in 

 fine gauze the birds would catch their claws) and let in a 

 lot of assorted insects every day for the birds to catch 

 naturally. They would not need cleaning in a cage of 

 the size, and the bath, food, &c., could easily be put in 

 by a small door. It would be worth taking a great deal 

 of trouble to domesticate this superb songster, which, after 

 so many centuries, still maintains, with all nations who 

 know it, its reputation as the most melodious of wild living 

 things. For acclimatization abroad I should expect the 

 Persian Nightingale to be a more suitable subject than 

 the European species, as it does not appear to undertake 

 long migrations as these do. I say these, because there 

 are two species of Nightingales in Europe, the Western 



