NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
407 
of the flesh is boiled and used to feed the young ducks ; they 
thrive wonderfully upon it. 
There is a legend in this neighbourhood that an old woman, 
who was bedridden, used to get a livelihood by hatching out 
early ducks. She had an immense bed in which she hatched 
out the ducks by the warmth under the bed-clothes. 
Nightingale {P. hoschiia), p. 122. — "This bird," Mr. Napier 
writes, breeds from the beginning of May till the middle of 
June. It lays from four to six eggs, which are usually of a uni- 
form olive brown or green, varying in shade. They are sometimes 
of a blue green, entirely covered with spots of olive brown, at 
other times of a clear blue green, with blood spots. The nest is 
commonly formed of oak or beech leaves, and grasses inter- 
mixed, and lined with fine grasses or hair ; a nest I have is 
formed almost entirely of moss, but contains a few oak-leaves 
and grasses ; it is also lined with a few horse-hairs. The night- 
ingale is found in Gloucestershire, AVilts, Sussex, Hants, Kent, 
Surrey, Middlesex, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Hunts, and many 
other counties. The lirst nest of the nightingale I ever found 
w^as in Sussex." 
Mr. Davy informs me that the earliest place for nightingales 
is Welwyn in Hertfordshire, where they arrive as early as 
the 10th of April ; in other places they come usually about 
the 14th. Bird-catchers, when they go out expressly for 
nightingales, carry with them scraped meat and eggs, and 
cram the birds about two hours after they are caught, and 
repeat the cramming several times during the day. The old 
birds are sometimes very difticult to " meat off," they will put 
up with any punishment rather than feed. Nightingales are not 
known in Derby or Yorkshire. Mr. Davy has frequently sent 
these birds in pairs to both places. The late Sir Charles Slingsby 
used to take a dozen pairs of nightingales at a time in the hopes 
of acclimatising them at Knaresborough in Yorkshire. On one 
occasion nightingales bred thei'e, the keeper found a nest and 
eggs, but on the whole this experiment has not succeeded. The 
reason why nightingales are not found in many districts, such 
as Scotland, Devonshire, Cornwall, is that their proper insect 
food is not there. The food of the nightingale consists of small 
beetles and any sort of fleshy caterpillars, not hairy caterpillars. 
It is stated by some that the nightingale will feed on the glow- 
worms at night, but this is a mistake ; the bird when once settled 
down after dark, never moves from his lodging unless disturbed. 
Any person by starting one or two nightingales singing in a road 
