Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/162

 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