BRITISH BIRDS. 69 



bush left ; but when brick and mortar finally crowded them out, they rather 

 left the neighbourhood altogether than go to the other side of the hill. 

 Round Shooter's Hill and Combe's Wood they make themselves as happy in 

 the gardens as in the woods ; but not so at Highgate and Hampstead ; all I 

 ever heard in the gardens there was one close to the Seven Ponds. 



" And now for the young ones. The first batch leaves the nest at the 

 beginning of June, and the second about the middle of July. After that 

 the Nightingales seem to have vanished. Now and then, if you come too 

 close to be pleasant, you may hear an old hen raising a cry of alarm. 

 She gets very dilapidated during the hatching; her wing- and tail-feathers 

 fall out so fast that she is almost disabled from flying for a few weeks. 

 The young ones disperse themselves and are exceedingly quiet. About the 

 end of August they become noisy and roam about in flocks, and in September 

 they depart for their winter quarters. On their road through Italy a great 

 many are caught for the spit of the Neapolitan epicures. The catching- 

 season is in spring before the hens arrive ; and in the autumn a few (but very 

 few) young ones, called branchers, are caught. Neither young nor old begin 

 to sing audibly before the end of the year ; and then the ' poor things ' are 

 far beyond the reach of the London trappers ; they are beyond the Mediter- 

 ranean. 



" A word about birds in gardens. Professor Huxley, in a lecture to 

 working men on the struggle for existence, stated once that humble bees 

 were more numerous in the neighbourhood of human dwellings than in 

 distant fields, because the cats kept the field-mice down. The field-mice 

 are very fond of eating the larvae of the humble bees. Now the cats are as 

 fond of birds as of field-mice. The small Insectivora stand a very bad chance 

 with the cats. They not only build their nests close to the ground, but their 

 young ones leave the nest before they are able to fly. But there is some- 

 thing else that may make birds scarce in certain gardens. Not long since 

 the advisability of destroying birds to save the raspberries was publicly dis- 

 cussed. All insectivorous birds are fond of berries, and some gardeners may 



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