"_The Blackbird whistles down the vale,_ _How blithe the lay._" SCOTT. "_The Merle's note_ _Mellifluous, rich, deep toned, fills all the vale_ _And charms the ravish'd ear._" GRAHAME. The blackbird is the shadow of the thrush: you seldom see or hear one without the other: nor, indeed, is either of them often mentioned alone. Yet the blackbird is probably the more commonly seen. For one thing, it is a very conspicuous bird; for another, it is not so diffident as the thrush. It is the blackbirds that you see flying out of the cherry-trees and strawberry-beds, but if you set nets for the marauders, as I did one year to stock an aviary, you catch quite as many mavises as merles. The former, it is said, are among the fruit "looking for worms," but I doubt it. They are not so bold in their depredations as their black cousins, but I fancy they are more sly. Blackbirds will fly away with a cherry in their beaks or a strawberry without any affectation of innocence: the thrush, when startled, goes off "empty-handed." But throw down a handful of fruit, especially raspberries, in an aviary, go aside and watch which bird is first at the feast--it is the thrush. The blackbird and thrush are really two birds of very dissimilar character: the same traps will not succeed as well with one as with the other, nor is it so easy to rear the former as the latter. Country people declare that the mothers poison their young ones when caged, and a poet says: "The timid blackbird--she, that seen, Will bear black poisonous berries to her nest, Lest man should cage her darlings." Whatever foundation there may be for the belief, I found that if I caged a nest of blackbirds (leaving the cage in the bush and the top open for the parents to go in and out), the old birds would visit the nest, presumably with food, with the greatest diligence, but the young birds would be dying in two days. The thrushes kept their young ones alive.