WARBLER. 37 



nest composed of dry stalks of vegetables, particularly goose grass, 

 with tender, smooth, dead branches of furze, intermixed sparingly 

 with wool, and lined with a few dry stalks of some fine carex ; it was 

 flimsy in its texture, not ill resembling that of the Whitethroat ; the 

 eggs cinereous, or greenish white, fully speckled all over with olive- 

 coloured brown, most so at the larger end ; general weight of the 

 egg 22 grains. Some young ones were also obtained, and brought 

 up by feeding them with grasshoppers for five or six days, after which 

 they ate a mixture of bread, chopped boiled meat, and a little finely 

 pounded hemp and rape seed : they soon became tolerably familiar, 

 but were in perpetual movement, putting themselves into various and 

 singular attitudes, erecting the crest at intervals, as well as the tail, 

 accompanied by a double or treble cry, like the words Cha, cha, cha ; 

 the song, or what may be termed so, was different from that of any 

 known bird, but in part resembled that of the Stonechat.* 



Buffou says, it is a native of Provence, in France, and found 

 among cabbages, living on the small insects which harbour there; 

 that it flies in a jerking manner, from the length of the tail, in 

 comparison with the shortness of its wings, having a shrill piping 

 note, several times repeated : all this appears to be true, and we 

 have not a doubt of its being a constant inhabitant in France as well 

 as in England, although hitherto the circumstance had eluded 

 discovery. 



A. — Length five inches and a quarter. Irides gold-colour; orbits 

 crimson ; crown black ; back dark ash, wings very short, dark brown; 

 throat white; neck, breast, and belly, white, mixed with ash-colour; 

 legs yellowish ; outmost feather of the tail white on the outer web 

 and tip ; one or two of the next tipped with white, the middle feathers 

 the longest. 



The female mouse-colour, without black any where ; eyes and 

 lids as in the male ; beneath wholly whitish, with a russet tinge in 

 some; tail as in the male, but dirty white on the sides. 



* Lin. Trans, ix. 191. 



