It was not in my power to procure you a black-cap, or a less reed-
sparrow, or sedge-bird, alive. As the first is undoubtedly, and the
last, as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of passage, they would
require more nice and curious management in a cage than I should
be able to give them; they are both distinguished songsters. The
note of the former has such a wild sweetness that it always brings
to my mind those lines in a song in As You Like It,
And tune his merry note
Unto the wild bird's throat.-Shakespeare.
The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the song of
several other birds; but then it also has an hurrying mariner, not at
all to its advantage; it is notwithstanding a delicate polyglot.
It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night; perhaps only
caged birds do so. I once knew a tame red-breast in a cage that
always sang as long as candles were in the room; but in their wild
state no one supposes they sing in the night.
I should be almost ready to doubt the fact, that there are to be seen
much fewer birds in July than in any former month,
notwithstanding so many young are hatched daily.
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