CAGE SINGING BIRDS. 
37 
to be reared by hand, and must be fed every hour during the 
day on the food above described. If you still keep the old 
birds prisoners, which you should do, as instructors of the 
young in singing, let them be fed on fresh ants' eggs ana 
meal-worms, or, these failing, supply their place by roasted 
ox-heart and raw carrot, both grated fine, and mixed with a 
few dried ants' eggs, of which every bird keeper ought to have 
a store. Carrots may always be preserved fresh, if placed in 
aand in the cellar ; a little lean beef^ or mutton, free from 
fat, may be occasionally given with the above. Nightingales 
are very fond of boiled vegetables and soft pudding, and a 
little now and then is good for them, as is stale white bread 
soaked in milk, squeezed dry, and mixed with yolk of egg, 
or magg^ots of the flesh-fly, or ground hemp-seed scalded. 
Spiders, earwigs, crickets, and various insects, may also be 
given with advantage. Several other kinds of food are used 
for this bird, such, for instance, as pea-meal and egg, made 
into a loaf and baked ; when wanted for use, it is grated and 
mixed with dried ants' eggs and water into a paste. In 
_^Germany, according to Bechstein, crushed poppy-seeds, 
mixed with bread-crumbs, are much given, but the birds so 
fed, he says, generally die of decline. This author gives the 
following receipt for obtaining a constant supply of meal- 
worms, which, with ants' eggs, are undoubtedly the food 
most relished by, and fitted for, the nightingale : — 
" Into a half-gallon jar put some wheat-bran, barley, or oat-^ 
meal, and a few strips of thick brown paper, or old shoe 
leather ; throw in half a pint of meal worms, and allow them 
to remain for three months, occasionally moistening the cloth 
which is tied over the jar with a little beer. The worms 
will by this time have become beetles, laying eggs, and pro- 
^(ducing other worms with great rapidity. This will be your 
reservoir, out of which you shall give to one bird about three 
every day." 
Young nightingales brought up by hand seldom turn out 
good songsters, unless they are placed under the tuition of 
old birds of the same species. If a selection is made from a 
nest of fledglings for the purpose of rearing, it should be 
borne in mind that those birds with the lightest plumage, 
and most white about the throats, are the males ; before the 
first moulting they do not resemble the parents, but after- 
