The TRAMMELS NET is most generally made about thirty-six yards in length and six in breadth, with six ribs of packthread, the ends of which are fastened upon two poles each of sixteen feet long. The mode of using this net is for two persons to take it out on a dark night and drag it on the ground, touching the ground with it at intervals of every five or six steps, otherwise many birds would be passed over. The instant any fly up against the net, it is dropped, thereby securing all that are underneath. Many other birds which nestle on the ground, besides larks, are, as may be supposed, taken in this species of net.

BIRD-LIME is often recommended as a means by which birds may be taken, but it is a very ineffectual one. There are two ways of using it; the first is by smearing some small twigs with it, and laying them on the ground and scattering some crumbs of bread around them; the moment the birds observe the treat laid out for thein, and alight, they get entangled with the twigs which adhere to their feet, and form a great inconvenience to them in flying away, even if they do not check their flight altogether. The other method of employing the lime is by smearing some over a hog's bristle, to the end of which a piece of bread has been secured; this is thrown upon the ground; a bird, little dreaming mischief, flies away with the piece of bread, and the bristle of course soon gets entwined around its wings, and brings it to the ground. This method is, perhaps, less effectual than the former, as the bird may fly some distance before it falls.

In taking young birds from the nest, great care is necessary, for if carried away when only stubbed or half-fledged, it is impossible to rear them by hand, as they require such constant feeding and attendance. The proper time for removing them is when the tail feathers begin to grow, for should they be taken at an earlier period, their stomachs will not support the change of food, and if at a later, in most cases it is difficult to make them open their beaks to take in food so novel to them. Some species of birds, however, are naturally so docile, that they may be taken at any age, and reared without difficulty.

As in our description of birds we have pointed out the best kind of cage adapted for each, it will only be necessary to give here a brief description of

should be furnished; the perches should be placed at various heights, and in the most convenient places. The door may be put according to fancy; in some cages it is at the side, as in the above representation. A small shelf should be fastened to the boarded back, and from the edge of the shelf a partition should be carried up to the top of the cage; this little shelf, with its partition, serves as a private chamber in which the birds may construct their nests, and two small boxes, or rather trays, are put inside for them to build in; two holes are made in the partition to allow of free egress and regress, and the materials of which nests are usually composed, such as hay, elk's hair, down, feathers, and the ravellings of silk or cotton, should be put into a little net pouch, or bag, and hung from the roof of the cage near the perches. Some bird-fanciers recommend the washing of the breeding-cages with lime once or twice during the summer season, to keep the birds free from insects, but scrupulous attention to the cleanliness of the cage will always preserve its inmates from such annoyances.

LINNETS.

There are three varieties of linnets, the common linnet, familiar to every boy, the goldfinch, or thistlefinch, as it is also called on account of its feeding on thistle down, and the greenfinch or green linnet. But the common linnet is the singing bird, and many bird-fanciers say that the mixed breed of the canary and common linnet produces a sweeter singer than either of the birds unmixed. Linnets are easily

tamed, show great fondness towards those who feed them, and seem to care less about being kept captive in cages than other birds. They also live a many years. The song of the common linnet is very sweet, very lively, and has many variations, and stands second to none of our small British song birds, if we except the blackcap, which is the sweetest singer of them all. As the common linuet is the most plentiful, readily procured, and sold cheap, it is the best song-bird the young fancier can start with, as it is not at all a difficult bird to rear. The male may be easily distinguished from the female by being browner on the back, having the first, second, third, and fourth feathers of the wings white up to the quill, and in the spring, by being crimson on the breast; the female, usually greyish on the back, streaked with dusky brown, and yellowish white, on the rump with greyish brown and reddish white, and on the breast these spots are tolerably plentiful; the wing coverts are dusky chestnut. When younglings in the nest, the males have a white collar, and some white tints about the tail and wings; and the females are generally more of a grey than a brown colour, and very much streaked on the breast. These birds are most usually taken in clap nets, and when secured, they should be put in store cages, and fed upon such seeds as you find they generally feed on, with the addition of

a little bruised hemp-seed; the cage should be placed where the birds may not be molested for three or four days, after which time they should be taken out and put into separate cages, which are usually of very small dimensions and trifling value. These little

habitations are wired at the front and two sides, and the top and back are made of wood, painted on the outside green, and in the inside white; the receptacles for water and seed are commonly made of lead, but in superior kinds of cages a drawer for the seed, and a glass for the water, are often employed. The food most proper for these birds are the canary and summer rape-seeds (winter rape-seed is poisonous to them when in captivity, although not at all hurtful when they are wild), and a few corns of hemp-seed occasionally; seeded chick-weed, beet leaf, and lettuce-seed will be found beneficial if the birds be mopish; and if they are troubled with a looseness, a bit of chalk and some bruised hemp-seed, a stalk of plantain, and saffron in their water, are excellent remedies. If taken from the nest it may be taught to imitate the songs of the canary, woodlark, chaffinch, &c., and if kept by itself, to repeat tunes whistled to it. When they are taken so young, the food most recommended is moistened white bread, hard boiled egg, and soaked hemp-seed. Male linnets will pair with hen canaries, and their mule progeny can scarcely be recognised from grey canaries; their song is exceedingly beautiful, and they will learn tunes readily, and as we have before remarked, these mules are the best singers of the two. Linnets frequent hedges, bushes, and furze, and the skirts of woods; but as soon as autumn sets in, they take to the fields, and congregate in large flights; and in the winter they are wanderers, roving about in quest of food wherever the snow has not enshrouded the earth in its white robe, and are generally found at this season of the year near the sea-side. These birds have usually two broods in the year, and the young ones are sufficiently fledged in April to be taken. Their nest, which they take great pains to conceal, is often found in furze-bushes, the outside is formed of dry grass, roots, and moss, and the inside generally lined with hair and wool. The female lays four or five eggs, which are white, tinged with faint blue, and sprinkled with brown dots at the larger end. In flocking time the male linnet no longer shows the red on its breast.

make the whole house ring again, his song is so full, so sweet, so deep and loud, and so enriched with a variety of oily, silvery modulations, especially that long soft shake, which, though it sinks gradually into the lowest note a bird can utter, is heard as distinctly as the louder tones, and then just as you think it is about to die away, and you begin to anticipate the silence that must follow, higher and higher swells the song to the loftiest burst of melody, and you feel as if you wouldn't part with the bird for twenty times his weight in gold. When singing it distends its little throat, while the whole body quivers with delight, telling that it feels as much pleasure itself as it gives to the listener. Gilbert White, whose "Natural History of Selborne" every boy ought to read, for the sake of its beautiful descriptions of the habits of birds and animals, speaking of the blackcap, says its "note has such a wild sweetness that it always brings to my mind those lines in a song in Shakspeare's 'As You Like It'

"And tune his merry note,

Unto the sweet bird's throat."

And I have no doubt in my own mind that Shakspeare was listening to the singing of the blackcap, or called to memory its notes, as he had often heard them when a boy in the green fields that spread around his native place, when he composed that beautiful and simple song which begins with

"Under the greenwood tree,

Who loves to lie with me.'

The back and wings of the blackcap are of an olive grey, throat and breast of a silvery grey, belly and vent white, sides of the head and back of the neck ash colour, and the top of its head black as night, whence its name. The female is a little larger than the male, and her distinctive marks are the cap brown, the upper part of her body reddish grey, inclining to olive, cheeks and throat light grey, breast, sides, and thighs light grey, tinged with olive, and her belly reddish white; she lays generally once a year, but sometimes twice; the nest is well built, and is commonly found in some low bush or shrub. The eggs, four or five in number, are of a pale reddish-brown, dashed with spots of the same hue, but darker. It is very fond of ivy. berries, and often builds in the ivy, when not too near the ground. Its favourite haunt is a garden or orchard, where, during the breedng season, it sings from morning to night. If you bring up the young ones, it is necessary to give them white bread soaked in milk, and if they are kept near other birds they will readily imitate their notes. If you are uncertain which birds are males,-for until the first moulting both sexes agree in plumage,-take a few brown feathers from the head, and their places will be supplied by black ones, if the birds are males; the song likewise will infallibly show the sex, as the males begin to sing as soon as they can feed themselves. Old birds are usually caught by nooses in the autumn, and they should then be fed upon elderberries and meal worms for a few days, so as gradually to bring them to their artificial food; this food should be bruised hemp-seed, and a paste made of bread soaked in water, and

afterwards steeped in milk, with barley or wheat meal, or a paste made of hemp-seed, scalded and bruised, and white bread also soaked; these pastes should be mixed up fresh every morning, and when given to the birds some fresh raw lean meat chopped fine, should be added to them; the yolk of an egg boiled hard and crumbled into small pieces, is a very excellent variation to the general food; meal worms, ants' eggs, maggots of the bluebottle fly, &c. are also exceedingly good, and most vegetables are eaten by these birds with avidity.

THE BULFINCH.

Pick-a-bud, as the gardeners call this great destroyer of buds in spring, especially the young bloom of greengages, is a beautifully-marked bird, having a splendid red breast, a black head, and a pleasant-looking ashcoloured back, which is varied by the black of his wing feathers and tail. He is very fond of singing while hidden amid dark fir-trees or thick impenetrable bushes, as if he liked to have it all to himself and not to be disturbed, and in such spots as these the nest is generally to be found, containing four or five eggs of a pale geenish white colour, dashed with dark orange-brown spots at the larger end. In a wild state the notes of the bulfinch are so low as only to be heard when very near the spot from where the bird is stationed; but there is something very sweet and plaintive in its low melodious notes, far more pleasant to our ears than that loud piping which they make after having been caged and taught. Though very few Naturalists agree with us in this opinion, they all admit that its notes are sweet in a wild state, but can only be brought out to perfection by teaching him to sing to the bird-organ. We contend that the notes are far sweeter when he is left to himself, and that after he is taught they are unnatural; there is a low silvery ring about the natural song of the bulfinch very pleasant to listen to in a room, but ten times sweeter when heard from some shadowy copse, when the winds that blow about you smell as if they had been out all day gathering perfumes from the May-blossoms.

The bulfinch possesses considerable powers of mimicry, learns to whistle airs with great correctness, and touches them off in so pleasing a manner, and with so soft a note, that it is often on this account one of the most highly-prized of cage birds. It may even be taught to repeat a few syllables distinctly, but its memory must not be taxed to remember too much. In Hesse and Fulda, in Germany, vast numbers of these little mocking birds are taught to whistle such airs as God save the Queen, the Hunter's chorus in Der Freischutz, &c.; they are principally brought over to England, where very high prices are frequently paid for them, especially if they are thoroughly accomplished.

In England bulfinches are not very plentiful, through a species of