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sheep’s heart, with three or four mealworms in a day, and a few

ants with their eggs and some of their mould at the bottom of

their cage, among which, some hen’s egg boiled hard and

chopped very small, should be strewed, and some saffron put

into their water.” White sugar candy and sheep’s heart would

be very likely, one would think, rather to increase than to cure

the poor bird’s melancholy, but the stimulating effect of meal¬

worms seems to have been well known. Indeed, if we omit the

raw meat, the diet of ants’ eggs, mealworms and hard boiled egg

has not been much improved upon in the present day.


The following story, which is related with the utmost

simplicity as sober fact, is, I must confess, more amusing than

credible. Our author is quoting from a correspondent :


“While I was at Ratisbou,” says this correspondent, “I

put up at an Inn, where my host had three Nightingales. The

Nightingales were placed separately, so that each was shut up by

itselfin a dark cage. It was usual then, about midnight when all

was dark in the house, to hear the two Nightingales jangling and

talking with each other and plainly imitating men’s discourse.

The third hung more remote, so that I could not so well hear it

as I lay a-bed. Rut it is wonderful to tell how these two provoked

each other : and, by answering, invited and drew one another to

speak. Besides the daily discourse of the guests they chanted

out two stories, which generally held them from midnight to

morning: and that with such modulations and inflections, that

no man could have taken to come from such little creatures.

One of their stories was concerning the tapster and his wife,

wdio refused to follow him to the wars, as he desired her. There

was a long and earnest contention between them, and all this

dialogue the birds repeated. They even repeated the unseemly

words which were cast out between them and which ought

rather to have been suppressed and kept a secret. But the birds

not knowing the difference between modest, immodest, honest

and filthy words, did out with them.”


Apparently the “Nightingale story” of our grandfathers

was the forerunner of the modern “ Parrot story.”


The diet and treatment advised for other insectivorous

birds is practically the same as for the Nightingale, sheep’s heart

being considered, apparently, the most important item.


Linnets are to be reared on “ rapeseed soaked in water,

scalded and afterwards bruised ; to this should be put twice as

much white bread that has first been soaked in water and after¬

wards boiled in a little milk, mixing them together in a kind of



