THE BLACKBIRD. 
6l 
hath furnished them, to the shame of art,” the Blackbird, which “with melodious 
voice bids welcome to the cheerful spring, and in its fixed months warbles forth such 
ditties as no art or instrument can reach to. 
To return, however, from poetical prose to that true poet, Thomson, how well 
has he seized upon the characteristics of the Blackbird’s spring song in the line— 
“ The Blackbird whistles from the thorny brake.” 
Another close observer of nature, Wordsworth, fitly enough writes of it— 
“ The Blackbird among leafy trees, 
The lark above the hill, 
Let loose their carols when they please, 
Are quiet when they will.” 
But it has fullest justice done to its garden-loving habits by the Laureate. Thus 
he makes Francis, in “ Audley Court, laugh 
“ While the Blackbird on the pippin hung 
To hear him ; ” 
and devotes a whole poem to show how 
“Tho’ I spared thee all the spring, 
Thy sole delight is sitting still, 
With that gold dagger of thy bill, 
To fret the summer jenneting.” 
The wholesome moral succeeds— 
“Take warning! He that will not sing 
While yon sun prospers in the blue 
Shall sing for want ere leaves are new, 
Caught in the frozen palms of spring.” 
Pied and albino Blackbirds have been alluded to as curious freaks of nature. 
If any one should desire to manufacture such a bird, we present him with what is said to 
be an infallible receipt to enable him to do so. It comes from a scarce and diminutive 
volume of 1652, Gervase Markham’s “Young Sportsman’s Instructor To cause 
birds to be white.—Steep the eggs of any bird two days in honey, then set ’em 
under the bird, and they will be white. And if you speckle eggs of any colour, and 
steep ’em two days in honey, it will (by the bird’s sitting on them) produce birds 
of the same colour.” The Blackbird has been known to have three broods in a 
season. Probably this arose when, owing to mild weather, the first nest was con¬ 
structed early in the year. It has been found so early as January. Shakespeare 
