Ill 



21 



on the ground. My cousin, Mr. H. E. Buxton, when living at Mussel, near Norwich, had all his 

 laurels nipped by the frost, and the next season all the Blackbirds nested on the ground." 



The following remarks on " a prolific pair of Blackbirds " was furnished by Mr. George 

 Gordon, of Elgin, to the 'Zoologist' for 1848 (p. 2297): — "The following notice regarding the 

 nidification &c. of a single pair of Blackbirds, during the bygone breeding-season, may interest 

 some of your readers, and show that this species may multiply in a greater ratio than many are 

 aware of. April 27th, 1848: The young leave the first nest, built in a clump of ivy on the top 

 of a wall, four in number, one egg having been abstracted from the nest before incubation. 

 April 29th: Two eggs in the second nest, detected in a bushy yew tree. May 16th: The cock 

 observed feeding the five young, newly hatched, on the second nest. May 24th : Hen Blackbird 

 seen making her third nest in an apple-tree nailed to a wall. May 29th : Two eggs in the third 

 nest, and the brood leave the second nest and perch on the trees. June 10th : Third nest for- 

 saken ; of the eggs, which were five in number, two remain in the nest, part of the others on the 

 ground below the nest, and part of them found on a walk some twenty yards from it. June 14th : 

 Blackbird's fourth nest begun in a birch hedge. June 23rd: Of the five eggs laid in the fourth 

 nest only two remain ; another found on the ground below it : it seems to have been pillaged by 

 some bird in the same way as the third nest. June 26th : Fifth and last nest of Blackbird 

 partially formed in a vine trained on the end of a house. July 18th : Blackbirds in the fifth nest 

 half grown ; they leave the nest on the 26 th. Thus a single pair of birds had twenty-five eggs, 

 and reared fourteen young in one season. The garden and shrubbery are so small in extent that 

 had there been more than one pair about them they would at once have been detected; and sucli 

 were frequently looked for, but in vain. The dates of the different stages observed also tend to 

 show that one pair may have constructed and managed the whole nests with their contents, eggs 

 being never found in more than one nest at the same time, unless when one had been forsaken. 

 From a careful examination of the ground around the third nest it is inferred that it must have 

 been some winged creature that disturbed the female on her eggs and destroyed some of them. 

 Was this the male]" 



In our account of the Song-Thrush, we have already given an instance, on the authority of 

 Count Salvadori, of a hybrid between that bird and the present species. There is one in the 

 British Museum, presented by Mr. A. D. Bartlett. Macgillivray's work also contains a record of 

 a similar occurrence from the pen of his able correspondent Mr. Weir: — "That birds in a state 

 of confinement may be induced, by the solicitations of love, to form alliances with other species 

 of the same genus, or such as resemble them closely in size and habits, when they have not an 

 opportunity of making a choice, is not wonderful ; but that they should do so when left to the 

 freedom of their will is rather strange, and what seldom occurs. Mr. Russell, of Moss-side, my 

 next neighbouring proprietor, and his brother informed me that about the conclusion of the 

 winter of 1836 a male Blackbird and a female Thrush fed occasionally together within a short 

 distance of their house. At the commencement of spring their attachment to each other 

 appeared more decided ; they carried on a course of regular flirtation, which eventually ended in 

 matrimony." 



