540 FRINGILLID A. 
its shoulder, and a match in its claw, and discharged a 
small cannon. The same bird also acted as if it had been 
wounded. It was wheeled in a barrow, to convey it, as it 
were, to the hospital; after which it flew away before the 
company. The seventh turned a kind of windmill; and 
the last bird stood in the midst of some fireworks which 
were discharged all round it, and this without exhibiting 
the least symptom of fear. 
In spring, and the early part of summer, the Goldfinch 
frequents gardens and orchards. Hurdis, in his Evening 
Walk, says— ‘ 
“T love to hear the Goldfinch twit and twit, 
And see him pick the groundsel’s feathered seeds ; 
And then in bower of apple blossom perched, 
Trim his gay suit, and pay us with a song.” 
The Goldfinch builds a very neat nest, which is some- 
times fixed in an apple or pear tree; occasionally in a 
hedge, or thick bush in a small copse, or an evergreen in a 
plantation. A nest now before me is formed on the outside 
with fine twigs of fir, green grass bents, fine roots, some 
wool, and several pieces of white worsted, curiously inter- 
woven together; lined with willow down, feathers, and 
numerous long hairs. It has been well observed, “that 
birds will in general take the materials for building which 
they can most easily procure.” Bolton, in the preface to 
his Harmonia Ruralis, says, “1 observed a pair of Gold- 
finches beginning to make their nest in my garden, on the 
10th of May 1792; they had formed the groundwork with 
moss, grass, &c., as usual; but on my scattering small 
parcels of wool in different parts of the garden, they in 
a great measure left off the use of their own stuff, and 
employed the wool. Afterwards I gave them cotton, on 
which they rejected the wool, and proceeded with the 
cotton ; the third day I supplied them with fine down, on 
