3242 THE ZooLoGist—OcTOBER, 1872. 
bush, a box, a basket—in fact anywhere: if they do not require it 
for laying purposes, they use it as a sleeping apartment; they all 
make a large nest, composed of grass-stems, fine roots, tow, and 
cotton-wool, having a long passage leading into the nest proper. 
Unfortunately, the newly-imported birds lay and hatch in Novem- 
ber and December; and during the long nights, from 4 P.M. to 
8 A.M., the young are starved, being unable to go so long without 
food. Among all these finches a most peculiar method of love- 
making prevails. The cock will take a long, stiff grass-stem by its 
extreme end in his bill, and, holding up his head erect in the air, 
thus he takes his place by the side of the hen, where, in this 
curious position he makes sundry grotesque springs and jumps, 
singing all the while, the notes varying according to the species. 
I have observed this habit only among Australian finches, 
and with these, whatever the genus or species, it is the universal 
custom. 
A pair of Virginian nightingales should be in every good-sized 
aviary: they are very showy, always in active motion, and both 
cock and hen sing the greater part of the year, early and late, and 
all day long. The hen of a pair J lately kept laid in a suspended 
seed-pan, without making a nest; had she been supplied with 
materials, or furnished with a blackbird’s nest, no doubt she would 
have sat and hatched out her young. 
I must now bring these jottings to a close by merely remarking 
that few birds in a large aviary are more interesting than a pair of 
Californian quails: they are very tame and hardy; in May they 
will scratch a small hollow in the earth, where the hen will daily 
lay an egg for a month or six weeks! Small bantams readily 
bring out the young, which are easily reared on groats, canary- 
seed, chopped egg and bread, and especially ants’ eggs, but these 
are not indispensable. One year, the hen after laying seventeen 
eggs sat on them herself, and brought out fifteen young; and there 
could not be a prettier sight than these beautifully-marked, tiny 
puff-balls running about with the old cock and hen. 
BovuGHTon Kynepon. 
Croydon, August 8, 1872. 
