The Bullfinch is an ornament in a garden. Crown, wings, and tail are shining black, and the same colour surrounds the bill; mantle a beautiful ashen-grey, rump and under tail cover snow white, breast and under-parts a fine red. In the female the under-part is ashen-grey. Bill short but very thick, at the end curved and hooked. The clutch is composed of five green eggs with purple and grey speckles. It nests in the fir woods of the mountains, at a height of about six yards; the nest is made of thin twigs and is lined with hair. * * * * * The Goldfinch (_Carduélis élegans_) is so well known in Great Britain that it requires little description. Unhappily for the “Proud Tailor,” as he is called in the Midlands, he has always been a favourite cage-bird, and on the South Downs Goldfinches have been captured in thousands at the times of migration, to be miserably caged in dozens for the bird dealers. They are birds which found their food on the waste lands where large thistles used to grow, and with the improvement of these waste lands the thistles have gone, and the Goldfinches with them. Increased Bird Protection is, however, causing more Goldfinches to breed amongst us, which is a good thing for agriculture, this bird’s food consisting, as it does, of the seeds of the thistle, knap-weed, groundsel, dock, and other plants. The Goldfinch is considered to be one of the most useful of all our birds, feeding, as it does, on the seeds of noxious plants of which there is a succession all the year round. It ought to be encouraged in orchards, where it feeds its young on small caterpillars, and destroys great numbers of other insects for them. Its relative, the Greenfinch (_Ligurinus chlóris_), a common and well-known species everywhere, is not quite so valuable a bird to the agriculturist as the above species. It is well known that it steals much swede and turnip seed, still it devours quantities of the seeds of such weeds as dandelion, corn marigold, charlock, wild vetch, etc., and the parents capture immense quantities of moths, flies, caterpillars, and other pests for their young. [Illustration: A Feast of Thistle Seed.] THE YELLOW HAMMER. (_Emberiza citrinella._) This is a pretty, cheerful, friendly bird, that lives in gardens, thickets, or the outer part of the woods. Its chief distinguishing characteristic is that it loves to associate with other kinds of birds, especially the Fieldfares, with which it is most intimate. During the brooding time and before the seeds are ripe it lives chiefly on grubs and insects, being particularly fond of the smooth caterpillars, which the other birds do not much relish. It also likes seeds, and rather the floury than the oily ones. In winter it flies about the fields with other birds, and destroys the seed of the runners, and the weeds that shoot up through the snow--and is thus doubly of use to the farmer.