238 Habits of the Thrush. 
only plastering the bottom, which could not have been done so 
well afterwards. When all was finished, the cock took his share 
in the hatching; but he did not sit so long as the hen, and he 
often fed her while she was upon the nest. In thirteen days 
the young birds were out of the shells, which the old ones 
tee carried off. At first they could not be quite certain 
what food was brought for the young; but this, in time, be- 
came an object of peculiar interest, and he and his companions 
noticed that the birds brought “a orit hantle o’ stripit buck- 
ies ” * (Helix nemorilis, horténsis, and arbustorum) ; that she 
did not try to pick the snails from the buckies, but lifted each 
above her head, gave it a sharp lick on a tooth of the harrow, 
and broke it ae to pieces, and then caught the snail: Ste 
never let one fall.¢ She never brought any common snails 
(without shells), and not many worms. © Sometimes she 
brought butterflies ; and she brought a hantle 0 muffies (large 
moths). She generally carried away the dung of the young 
birds. As the young grew, and demanded greater supplies, 
the entrance and retreat of the parents through the door of 
the shed was often so rapid that it could not be seen, but was 
only known from the swoof/, or sound, as they darted over the 
heads of the men. 
One Monday morning, when the millwrights came to work 
at the usual hour, and expected the daily plea isure of seeing the 
mavises alert and busy, the nest was gone. A boy, prowling 
about on the Sun day, had found the ‘little sf family of love.” 
* The parents,” my friend said, ‘* mourned about for twa 
days: maistly the hen.” He enecle he said, could not well 
settle to his work for an hour or twa, and was “ neither to 
ha’d nor to bind, he was sae mad at the illdeedy laddie.” 
I am, Sir, &c. 
Selkirkshire, Dec. 1829. W.L. 
* T could, with some trouble, have given this curious relation still more 
interest by using the graphic and naive terms and language of the eye-wit- 
ness; but being in the broadest patois of the “ kingdom of Fife” (which, 
by the by, he did not much use in ordmary discourse, or talking of the 
details of his business), it would not have been generally ‘understood by your 
readers. 
t In the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science, No. i. 
p- 66., it 1s ‘mentioned that Mr. M‘ Gillavray had, in one of the Western 
Islands, observed a thrush (7Z'irdus musicus ) breaking whelks (Turbo litté- 
reus) on the shore. Being once on the western shore of Harris, in the 
month of June, I was greatly surprised to hear the song of the thrush 
resounding on all sides from the heathy and rocky banks ‘of the sea; but 
I have always suspected it to be another species, darker and less. 
