CAGE AND SINGING BIRDS. 75 
scattered, will have the desired effect. The chaffinch is a 
very jealous bh'd, and bh'dcatchers avail themselves of their 
knowledge of this to effect his capture : they place a tame 
; cock on the ground, fasten him to a peg, and surround him 
with limed twigs, or, perhaps, attach one of these twigs to 
the tail of the decoy; in either case, the wild bird, which 
flies furiously down as soon as he hears the cry of his sup- 
) 1 posed rival, becomes entangled in the snare. Chaffinches 
I which are caught about St. James's Day, are called in Ger- 
many James' finches these young birds are more hardy 
in constitution than those taken from the nest, and pro- 
vided they have a good memory, and will learn to sing, they 
are the most valualole birds. 
i Wonderful is the patience and ingenuity displayed by the 
Thuringian fbresters in the training of chaffinches, and mar- 
vellous stories do we hear of strophes and anti-strophes, and 
trills, and double trills, and wine songs, huntsman's songs, 
and bridegroom's songs, and all sorts of apocryphal me- 
! lodies, into which the music of these highly educated per- 
formers can be divided. Now, we do not mean to say that 
' the twelve different strains, with varieties, which Bechstein 
I describes, exist only in the imaginations of German bird- 
worshippers, but we do affirm that it must be an exces- 
sively nice musical ear that could detect those trills, and 
shakes, and warbles, which are said to mark the difference 
between the aforesaid strains, in those trained chaffinches 
which have come to us from the old " fatherland." Pro- 
bably, it requires a metaphysical brain, and senses more 
delicately attuned than we possess ; or it may be that the 
I best birds are kept at home, and the story of the Thurin- 
I gian's going eighty miles in the mere hope of snaring a 
1 good bird, and giving a cow in exchange for a trained 
singer, gives some look of probability to this latter sup- 
position. Be this as it may, however, it must be confessed 
that a well-educated chaffinch is a beautiful songster, and 
a very desirable acquisition to the aviary. With the 
French it is a great favourite, and they have a proverb — 
'^as gay as a chaffinch," which expresses their sense of 
its lively and engaging qualities. 
Wild chaffinches feed upon seeds, grain, and insects, the 
first of which they geuBrally shell before eating, them; in 
