AMERICAN ANIMALS. 
125 
last letter, you will find that many species continued to warble 
after the beginning of July. 
The titlark and yellowhammer breed late, the latter very late ; 
and therefore it is no wonder that they protract their song : for 
I lay it down as a maxim in ornithology, that as long as there is 
any incubation going on there is music. As to the redbreast 
and wren, it is well known to the most incurious observer that 
they whistle the year round, hard frost excepted; especially the 
latter. 
It was not in my power to procure you a black-cap, or a less 
reed-sparrow, or sedge-bird, alive. As the first is undoubtedly, 
and the last, as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of passage, 
they would require more nice and curious management in a cage 
than I should be able to give them :* they are both distinguished 
songsters. The note of the former has such a wild sweetness 
that it always brings to my mind those lines in a song in " As 
You Like It.^' 
"And tune his merry note. 
Unto the ivild bird's throat." Shakspeare. 
The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the 
song of several other birds; but then it has also a hurrying 
* I have never experienced much difficulty in keeping any of our insectivorous birds in confine- 
ment, ahhough at different times I have possessed, with very few exceptions, the whole of them. 
The nightingale, redstart, furze-chats, and common wren are about the most delicate, or rather 
these require the most nutritious food ; after them may be mentioned the fallow-chat, the reed- 
lings, the swallows, the pettychaps genus, the wagtails, and the rose-mufflin ; and amongst the 
most hardy may be reckoned the pipits (more particularly the A. arboreus), the different fauvets, 
the furzelin, the hedge-dunnock, and the robin, all which last-mentioned birds may be very 
easily maintained in confinement at a small expense. Generally speaking, our summer visitants 
are not more tender of cold weather than a Canary bird, our little residents, the wren and kinglet, 
requiring greater care in winter ; next to these may be mentioned the different pettychaps ; while 
decidedly the most hardy of cold of any are the blackcap-fauvet and the tree-pipit, several of both 
which I have known to have been kept through a moderate winter in a very cold room without a 
fire, which destroyed a variety of other migrant birds. A very good general food which all these 
birds, excepting the nightingale, will readily eat, and which requires but little trouble to prepare, 
and will keep good for nearly a month, may be made by adding to about half a pound of the 
♦* German paste" of the bird-shops three or four ounces of crushed hempseed and four or five 
stale buns, crumbled, but not too small. Some chopped egg may also occasionally be given, and 
a little meat, either dressed or raw, and there should be always some bread and milk in the cage. 
Boiled vegetables, too, and in short whatever else is brought to table that is not salted, may occa- 
sionally be supplied ; for they will subsist on almost every description of human food, and thrive 
most when their diet is a little diversified. The fauvet genus may be kept during the fruit season 
almost wholly upon fruit, and at all times of the year grocers* currants are with them a favourite 
food. Insects should of course be given whenever practicable. A nightingale should always have 
access to two food pans, one of bread and milk, which it soon learns to eat when hungry, and 
becomes extremely fond of, the other of raw beef and egg, the former scraped, so as to obtain the 
substance of it, leaving the fibres, and then chopped up with the egg, which should be boiled hard : 
the latter food alone, without the bread and milk, is too stimulating, but is probably the most 
nutritious that could be given. Excepting in very cold weather, these birds should always have 
a pan of water to bathe in. — Ed. 
