238 Habits of the Thrush, 



only plastering the bottom, which could not have been done sd 

 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 

 always 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 grit hantle o' stripit buck- 

 les " * (Helix nemoralis, hortensis, and arbustorum) ; that she 

 did not try to pick the snails from the buckles, but lifted each 

 above her head, gave it a sharp lick on a tooth of the harrow, 

 and broke it all to pieces, and then caught the snail : she 

 never let one fall, f She never brought any common snails 

 (without shells), and not many worms. Sometimes she 

 brought butterflies ; and she brought a hantle d 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 swooff] 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 pleasure of seeing the 

 mavises alert and busy, the nest was gone. A boy, prowling 

 about on the Sunday, had found the little " family of love." 

 " The parents," my friend said, " mourned about for twa 

 days : maistly the hen." He himself, 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. 



* I 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 jpa^z* of the " kingdom of Fife " (which, 

 by the by, he did not much use in ordinary discourse, or talking of the 

 details of his business), it would not have been generally understood by your 

 readers. 



f In the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science, No. i. 

 p. 66., it is mentioned that Mr. M'Gillavray had, in one of the Western 

 Islands, observed a thrush (Turdus musicus) breaking whelks (Turbo litto- 

 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. 



I 



