OBSERVATIONS.--A sportsman discovered, in 1794, in the environs of Meiningen, in Suabia, a flight of eight or ten rose ouzels, moving leisurely from south-west to north-east, and passing from one cherry-tree to another. He fired on these birds, only one fell, which was fortunately very slightly wounded, so that it soon quite recovered. Being immediately carried to M. Von Wachter, the rector of Frickenhausen, this clergyman took the greatest care of it; he gave it a spacious cage, and found that barley-meal moistened with milk was as wholesome as agreeable to it. His kindness tamed it in a short time so far that it would come and take from his hand the insects which he offered to it. It soon sang also, but its warbling consisted at first of but a few harsh sounds, pretty well connected however, and this became at length more clear and smooth. Connoisseurs in the songs of birds discover in this song a mixture of many others; one of these connoisseurs, who had not discovered the bird, but heard its voice, thought he was listening to a concert of two starlings, two goldfinches, and perhaps a siskin; and when he saw that it was a single bird, he could not conceive how all this music proceeded from the same throat. This bird was still alive in 1802, and the delight of its possessor. THE BLACKBIRD. Turdus merula, LINNÆUS; Le Merle, BUFFON; Die Schwarzdrossel, BECHSTEIN. This species, the most docile of its genus, is nine inches and a half long, four of which belong to the tail. The beak is an inch long, and orange yellow; the iris is dark brown; the shanks are an inch high, and black. The whole plumage is of a pure velvety black; the eyelids alone are orange. The female is of a brownish black, with the breast of a reddish hue, and the belly grayish; the throat is spotted with dark and light brown. It is also rather larger than the male, which has led some persons who were not well acquainted with it to make another species of it. The white variety is very well known; there is besides the streaked, the black with a white head, and the pearl gray. [Illustration: CATO'S BLACKBIRD'S CAGE] HABITATION.--When wild the blackbird is found all over the old world, as well as in Germany; it is the only species of its genus which does not migrate thence. In confinement it is kept in a large cage; it is better to keep it separate because, whether from spite or jealousy, it is often inclined, like the tits, to pursue and kill its little companions of the aviary or room. FOOD.--When wild the blackbird eats berries, and, in winter, when insects are scarce, he seeks them near warm springs.