o\() LLYTH ON THE BRITISH FRUIT-EATING WARBLERS. 



so often disfigure the whitethroat's song. He seems also to be always 

 in such high spirits as not to know how to contain himself, taking fre- 

 quently a long circuitous flight from tree to tree, and back again a 

 dozen times, seemingly for no other purpose than mere exercise ; but he. 

 never mounts singing into the air, like the whitethroat. There are yet 

 many persons, I believe, who consider this species to be u a mere 

 variety " of the whitethroat ; and Mr. Mudie, who had evidently never 

 seen the bird, observes in the British Naturalist, when speaking of the 

 sylvan warblers, that " a diminutive of the whitethroat has also been 

 mentioned, but this will probably turn out to be only a mere variety of 

 that bird." These two species differ from each other in size, in make, in 

 colour, in their manners, their habits, their song, in the structure of 

 their nest, and in the markings of their eggs ; and surely " if all these 

 circumstances " (as Wilson observes, after making similar remarks on 

 two American birds, one of which had been considered a " bastard " 

 production of the other,) "be not sufficient to designate this" (the 

 babillard) " as a distinct species, by what criterion, I would ask, are we 

 to discriminate between a variety and an original species, or to assure 

 ourselves, that the great horned owl is not in fact, a bastard goose, or 

 the carrion crow a mere variety of the humming bird." In its general 

 habits, the babillard resembles the blackcap more than it does the white- 

 throat, and it utters precisely the same check (resembling the sound 

 produced by tapping two small pebbles together,) as the blackcap, but 

 its manners lean more to those of the whitethroat. It is, however, a 

 merely more active species than either. All the Ficcdulce have notes 

 analogous to the above mentioned check ; that of the garden warbler is 

 very seldom uttered ; it may be expressed by chep : the whitethroat's 

 is a kind of tchut ; and the furze- warbler is similar, but rather more 

 shrill, and it is usually preceded by a very peculiar rattling note, which 

 I have once and only once heard from the babillard. 



The song of the whitethroat is, I should imagine, too well known to 

 everybody to need a description here ; it is to be heard in every hedge, 

 in the margin of every wood, and upon every common ; and all who have 

 ever walked in a field must be acquainted with it. Its notes are brisk 

 and lively, and in some individuals extremely sweet and musical, but in 

 others quite harsh and dissonant. In confinement it is a very amusing 

 little bird, and, like the babillard, is perpetually singing; like that bird, 

 also,- it will never suffer itself to be outdone, and will often (as Mr. 

 Sweet observes) sing against a nightingale for hours together, but, in 

 raising its voice so much above its natural pitch, the song loses, in my 



