THE SOXG-THRUSH. 279 



and the thrush is in the way to intercept it. When collecting 

 food for the young, the birds carry it not in the bill, but in 

 the stomach. The membranous upper part of the stomach 

 is, in all those birds which are not furnished with a pouch, 

 a very convenient pannier for carrying food to their young ; 

 and though there are not many in which a milky secretion, 

 like that mentioned in the pigeons, is produced, yet, in all, 

 the food may be so far acted on by the gastric fluid of the 

 parent, as to be more easily digested by the young birds. 



The song-thrush builds in the middle of a hedge, tree, or 

 bush, but it builds lower than the missel-thrush ; and as 

 the nest of the latter externally resembles a lichen-crusted 

 stump, so the nest of the song-thrush resembles a mossy tuft. 

 Internally it is strengthened with mud, said io be water- 

 tight, and therefore destructive of the eggs in rainy seasons. 

 Rainy seasons are destructive to the nests of many birds ; 

 but they must be less so to that of the thrush than to many 

 others : the thrush does not build in situations where the 

 nest has much chance of being inundated by floods ; and it 

 may be said that the nests of all birds are about equally 

 secure from falling rain, while the process of incubation is 

 going on. If the nest is not so chosen as that the eggs are 

 sheltered from the weather by other means, it will generally 

 be found that the mother herself affords them sunicient 

 protection by her plumage and her mode of sitting. A 

 water-proof nest is no more a necessary means of drowning 

 than a water-proof boat : it is the preventing of water from 

 getting in, not from getting out, which is the grand means 

 of security ; and if the eggs of a bird were for any length of 

 time continually wet with falling rain, they would be cooled 

 more, and therefore rendered less likely to be fertile, than if 

 they were as long immersed in water. The birds whose 

 nests suffer the most from rain, are those that build on the 

 flat uplands, where the rain falls in torrents, and stagnates 



