138 
MERULIM. 
ticularly well fed, instancing in support of that view, the much 
greater number of eggs laid by a well fed domestic hen than by 
an ill fed one. 
A friend mentioned to me, that in 1837, he had very frequently 
observed a thrush on coming to feed its young, pick up and swal- 
low their mutings : this was its invariable practice, and the nest 
being within view of the windows of the house, several persons 
as well as himself, were witnesses to the proceeding. 
Observations made on a pair of thrushes which had their 
nest in the ivy on one of the walls at Wolf-hill in 1847, 
were as follows: — That on wet days the male bird invariably 
fed the young, the female leaving the nest on his approach, 
and going to about a yard’s distance from it during the time her 
mate was so employed. On fine days the female fed them, and 
the male sang perched on the top of a neighbouring tall tree. It 
was particularly remarked, that the female on going back to the 
nest after the male had fed the young, invariably eat all their 
mutings. In the second volume of Macgillivray’s Brit. Birds, 
which appeared in 1839, similar observations of Mr. Weir’s are 
recorded (p. 138). To the volume itself I must refer for this 
gentleman’s most interesting notes, on the number of times that 
a pair of thrushes fed their young during twenty-four hours; 
notes on the blackbird to the same effect will be found at p. 93 
of the volume. 
Although thrushes are very destructive to our cherries and 
other fruits, the admiration in which their song is held generally 
pleads so strongly in their favour as to save them from destruc- 
tion. In a friend’s garden near Belfast, I have known a few of 
them to forfeit their lives by eating of the fruit, with which traps 
were baited for blackbirds. In the hothouse at the same place, 
the gardener one day caught three or four of them regaling on 
his grapes, which reminds us of their partiality to this fruit in 
continental countries. By several British authors. Helix nemoralis 
is particularized as a favourite repast with this species, to which 
one author adds the H. hortensis, (Jour, of a Nat. p. 339,) and 
another the H. lucida, (Wern. Mem. vol. iii. p. 180,) but its 
