The Goldfinch, which is cousin to the Linnet, is wonderfully clever and docile, as I shall show you presently. In the first place, however, let me say a word or two about bird cleverness in general, which I copy from Jules Michelet’s interesting work, “The Bird.” Speaking of the great, cruel, and rapacious family of the _Raptores_, or Birds of Prey, he expresses satisfaction in the idea that this race of destroyers is decreasing, and that there may come a time when they no longer exist on the earth. He has no admiration for them, though they may be the swiftest of the swift, and the strongest of the strong, because they put forth none of the higher qualities of courage, address, or patient endurance in taking their prey, which are all weak and powerless in comparison with themselves; their poor unoffending victims. “All these cruel tyrants of the air,” he says, “like the serpents, have flattened skulls, which show the want of intellect and intelligence. These birds of prey, with their small brains, offer a striking contrast to the amiable and intelligent species which we find amongst the smaller birds. The head of the former is only a beak, that of the latter is a face.” Afterwards, to prove this more strongly, he gives a table to show the proportion of brain to the size of the body in these different species of birds. Thus the chaffinch, the sparrow, and the goldfinch, have more than six times as much brain as the eagle in proportion to the size of the body. We may look, therefore, for no less than six times his intelligence and docile ability. Whilst in the case of the little tomtit it is thirteen times as much. But now for the goldfinch, of which our cut—which is both faithful and beautiful—shows us a pair, evidently contemplating with much satisfaction the nest which they have just finished on one of the topmost boughs of a blossomy apple-tree. This nest is a wonderful little fabric, built of moss, dry grass, and slender roots, lined with hair, wool, and thistle-down; but the true wonder of the nest is the exact manner in which the outside is made to imitate the bough upon which it is placed. All its little ruggednesses and lichen growths are represented, whilst the colouring is so exactly that of the old apple-tree that it is almost impossible to know it from the branch itself. Wonderful ingenuity of instinct, which human skill would find it almost impossible to imitate! The bird lays mostly five eggs, which are of a bluish-grey, spotted with greyish-purple or brown, and sometimes with a dark streak or two.