modulated. I could name several of our own birds that surpass it in pure music. Like its congeners, the garden warbler and the whitethroat, it sings with great emphasis and strength, but its song is silvern, not golden.’ This account of the blackcap’s song is interesting as coming from a foreigner who has paid great attention to the bird music of his own country, and it is on the whole a very good description; but I should not say that the blackcap’s strain is crude, however wild and irregular it may be; nor that there is in it even a faint suggestion of the nightingale’s. In its active, restless habits this warbler resembles the other members of its group; but it exceeds them all in shyness. When approached it becomes silent, and conceals itself in the interior of the thicket. It frequents woods and orchards; also hedges and commons where large masses of furze and bramble are found, especially in the vicinity of trees. The nest is made of dry grass, lined with hair or fibrous roots, and is placed in the forked branches of a thick bush, three or four feet above the ground. The eggs, of which five or six are laid, are of a light reddish colour, mottled and blotched with darker red and reddish brown. They vary greatly, both in the depth of colour of the mottlings and in the pale ground-tints. The blackcap lives on insects, which it often captures on the wing, and on fruits, and is fond of raspberries and currants. Its autumn migration is in September. Garden Warbler. Sylvia hortensis. Upper plumage greyish brown tinged with olive; below the ear a patch of ash-grey; throat dull white; breast and flanks grey tinged with rust colour; rest of under parts dull white. Length, five and a quarter inches. * * * * * This warbler was first described as a British species by Willughby, more than two centuries ago, under the name of ‘prettichaps’; and Professor Newton, in a note to Yarrell’s account of it, says: ‘This name (prettichaps) seems never to have been in general use in England, or it would be readily adopted here.’ The old name of prettichaps, it may be mentioned, does not appear to be quite obsolete yet: I have heard it in Berkshire, where it was applied indiscriminately to the garden warbler and blackcap. The garden warbler is not common anywhere. In Ireland it is scarcely known; in Scotland, Wales, and a large part of England it is very rare. It is most frequently to be met with in the southern counties, especially in Hampshire. Very curiously, Gilbert White did not know this warbler, which may now be heard singing any day in spring in the neighbourhood of Selborne village.