Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/530

496 produce a certain number of offspring each year, but also to bring a certain number to maturity. Take the case of a cat. A female may be perpetually running with a male. You drown her kittens; vet she does not again kitten for six months or so. Compare her with a Nightingale. Harry a Nightingale's nest when the fledglings are nearly ready to fly. The bird does not sit down and ejaculate "Kismet," and feebly await the period of migration. She feels desolate without her young ones around her; she knows she has a duty to fulfil, and that the time is short. She begins to bustle about, and in a week she will have started laying again in a safer spot. In a dell at Clifton there were two pairs of Nightingales. Some deadly person of the rabid collector type took each clutch as it was laid, and again he did the same with the second clutches; but the faithful birds each nested a third time, and met with success at last.

There are further a few rules which are useful, and which I must endeavour to state more briefly: —

(1). The object of the breeding season is to maintain the numbers of each species at an equable level (not necessarily to increase them, though this is sometimes the case).

(2). By August the numbers of each species are probably treble what they were in April.

(3). These numbers are subsequently curtailed: —
 * (a). In the case of migratory species, many succumb to the hardships and dangers of the passage.
 * (b). In the case of resident species, many succumb to cold and lack of suitable food during the winter months.
 * (c). Every species alike is liable to losses through accident, from carnivorous birds, and at the hands of the collector, gamekeeper, and other misguided people. These losses, however, cannot compare with (a) and (b).

I will now attempt to treat of the various species more or less in detail.

1. and  (such as the Nightingale, Blackcap, &c).—Throughout the country five eggs is the usual number for all these birds to lay in a clutch. The migratory species in the majority of instances probably confine themselves to one brood, while nearly all the Finches