OR, PLAIN 



TEACHING. 245 



the lower coppices, rather than 

 the grown or aged woods and 

 plantations. Their nests, 11, are 

 sometimes found upon the ground, 

 at other times in a grove or 



11 



643. 



shrubbery, among thick branches 

 in a thorn-bush, or the trunk of 

 a tree tangled with climbing 

 vegetables, they are rather care- 

 lessly built of dried grasses and 

 slender roots, the eggs being of 

 a uniform brown colour. 



M. Gerardin was sauntering in the Paris 

 Jardin des Plantes on a fine evening, at that 

 season when the nightingales are in the most 

 powerful song, and listening with delight to 

 two which were singing against each other in 

 the trees near him, he took his German flute, 

 and touching a few passages in tender airs, 

 approached the spot whence the songs of the 

 birds came. At first they were silent ; but he 

 continued, and before long they accepted his 

 challenge, and sung in a higher key than that 

 in which he touched the flute. Gerardin 

 raised his key a third, and instantly the birds 

 raised their notes, still keeping above him. He 

 then raised it an entire octave; but, without 

 hesitating a moment, the nightingales raised 

 their notes still higher, and M. Gerardin, 

 acknowledging that he was vanquished, put up 

 his flute, and lingered to enjoy their song of 

 victory. 



We shall find many rooms' 

 nests, 414, in woods and planta- 

 tions. They are generally placed 

 among grass and moss in a broken 

 bark, or in a hole in the trunk of 

 a tree. Frequently the music of 

 the woods is enriched by the 

 notes of robins that have found 



their way into complete seclusion, 

 and warble joyously from the 

 upper branches of some prominent 

 tree, as if delighting in their se- 

 paration from those human habi- 

 tations near to which, in incle- 

 ment seasons, they delight to 

 draw. 



The situations in which robins build their 

 nests are very various, and some of them re- 

 markable. A writer in the " Field Naturalist's 

 Magazine ! gives an account of a pair of robins 

 that\ chose for their abode a small cottage, 

 which, though not actually inhabited, was con- 

 stantly used as a depository for potatoes, 

 harness, &c, and repeatedly visited by its 

 owners. It adjoined a blacksmith's shop ; but 

 neither the noise of the forge, nor the frequent 

 visits of the owners of the cottage, deterred 

 these fearless settlers. They entered through 

 a window frame, the lattice of which had been 

 removed ; and in a child's covered cart, which, 

 with its horse attached to it, was hanging on a 

 peg over the fire-place, and just afforded space 

 for the purpose, they built their first nest early 

 in the spring. The circumstance was observed, 

 and soon became an object of curiosity to the 

 neighbours, many of whom came to look at the 

 nest ; these inquisitive visits, however, had not 

 the effect of alarming the birds, who here 

 reared their first brood without accident. 



When the attention of the parents was no 

 longer needed by their full fledged offspring, 

 they set about providing for another family, 

 and built their second nest on a shelf on the 

 opposite side of the room. This second brood 

 had no sooner left them, than they again 

 betook themselves to the task of building a third 

 nest under the same sheltering roof, and for 

 this purpose chose another shelf, in a different 

 corner of the same room ; and there, in their 

 mossy bed, on a bundle of papers, on the 21st 

 of June, were four half-fledged nestlings, which 

 the hen was feeding, while a party was watching 

 the proceeding, the cock-bird contenting him- 

 self with looking on from the outside. 



Mr. Blackwell, of Manchester, relates that, 

 " A pair of these birds built their nest in a small 

 saw-pit. Soon after the female had begun to 

 sit, the sawing of timber was commenced at 

 this pit; and though the persons employed 

 continued their noisy occupation close to the 

 nest every day during the hatching of the eggs 

 and the rearing of the young, yet the old 

 birds performed their several parental offices 

 to their progeny without any interruption, and 

 apparently without alarm." 



Golden-crested wrens, 12, de- 

 light in evergreen pines, where 

 they catch insects that nestle in 

 the scales of their shoots and 

 cones. They form beautifully 

 constructed nests, 13, near the 

 ends of the branches of pines and 



