16 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



The keeper on whose beat the white Blackbird was shot 

 assured me that he had never seen it with a mate, and that he 

 did not believe it had nested during the two years he had noticed 

 it about the district. Such evidence as this is, of course, not 

 conclusive on the point, though I think it extremely probable 

 that his conjecture was right. Had it paired and assisted in the 

 rearing of a brood, surely some of the young would have been 

 abnormally marked, and, in this case, he would have observed 

 them on his daily rounds. A young and intelligent gamekeeper 

 would let very little escape his eye. 



A word about pied Blackbirds, which, to my mind, are more 

 subject to variations of plumage than any other species. I have 

 seen it stated — I cannot say where, for I read pages and pages 

 on the subject of birds almost daily — that the white feathers turn 

 in time to black, and that even in the case of albinos nature in 

 due course resumes her sway ; the argument being that, if such 

 were not the case, we should be continually meeting with ab- 

 normal-coloured species. Again, some other writer has recorded 

 his conviction that albinos never revert to the normal plumage, 

 and that natural white feathers always remain white ; but that 

 when resulting from disease they will resume the proper colours 

 at the moulting period. The cause of preternatural plumage in 

 birds need not be gone into here, but my impression is — once 

 white or pied, almost always white or pied; while I view with 

 some little incredulity the contention that disease is accountable 

 for some of our pied birds, and that when they resume their 

 normal health they also resume their ordinary plumage. What 

 evidence is there in support of this ? Surely it is more or less 

 assumption ? It is impossible to decide offhand about disease in 

 a bird, especially when it is at large; while the few pied Black- 

 birds I have known kept in cages have never reverted to the 

 normal colouring after moulting, although I have heard tell of an 

 instance or two to the contrary. Of course, the obvious retort to 

 this would be that none of them owed their white feathers to 

 disease. So be it. 



I have on a few occasions found six eggs in nests of this 

 species, but five and four are more commonly met with, while it 

 is quite the exception for a clutch to be represented by less than 

 the last-named number. 



