348 INSECTI VOILE. 



feathered, presenting no point that can be broken, and no 

 place that can be easily ruffled, on a forward motion ; so that 

 the bird slides unhurt through places where birds of different 

 form and plumage would be torn to pieces. The closest 

 hedge or brake presents no barrier to it ; so that it slips into 

 the hedge one knows not where ; and threading along without 

 stirring a twig, it will, apparently in an instant, slip out again 

 at the distance of several yards. It does not often leave its 

 cover ; and one may watch and even beat the brake, hearing 

 it, but without being able to see either it or its nest, for the 

 nest is as well hidden as the bird is expert at hiding. In 

 position, the nest is very similar to that of the Dartford 

 warbler (or rather the " furze warbler," as that leads one to 

 its haunts, and it is not met with in Dartford); but as it 

 inhabits wilder places, the materials are not quite the same. 

 In the hedges and bramble-brakes, the materials are the 

 withered stems of trailing plants ; and in furze bushes, where 

 those plants are not so abundant, they are more mossy. The 

 eggs are four or five, of a bluish-white, with very obscurf 

 rust-coloured mottlings. 



The males arrive on the south coast of England about the 

 middle of April, and gradually proceed to distribute them- 

 selves over the lowland and warmer parts of the country, 

 though they are always most numerous in the counties on 

 the south. That is the best time for seeing them, as they 

 then perch on the tops of the brakes and hedges, and utter 

 their cricket cry, which is their only song of love. When 

 the females arrive, and the nest building begins, there is no 

 more perching on the top; but the cry continues till about 

 the beginning of August ; and as the moult is probably com- 

 pleted in that month, the birds may take their leave of us 

 about the beginning of September. 



That the whole of our summer visitants moult in the very 

 hottest month of the year, is a point which, duly worked out, 



