In confinement he is so great an eater that if he is not caged he hardly ever quits the feeding-trough of the nightingale. Though he is more easily tamed than the blackcap, he seldom survives more than two or three years, and the artificial food is no doubt the cause. He appears very fond of the universal paste; but I have often observed that it causes the feathers to fall off to so great a degree that he becomes almost bare, and then I think he dies of cold rather than from any other cause[89]. BREEDING.--The nest of the fauvette, placed in a hedge or bush of white-thorn, at about three feet above the ground, is well built on the outside with blades of grass and roots, and inside with the finest and softest hay, very seldom with moss. The edges are fastened with spiders' webs and dry cocoons. The female lays four or five eggs, of a yellowish white, spotted all over with light ash grey and olive brown. The young, which are hatched after fifteen days' sitting, are no sooner fledged than they jump out of the nest the moment it is approached. DISEASES.--They are the same as in the blackcap; but the fauvette is still more subject to the loss of its feathers. It fattens so fast upon the first universal paste that it often dies from this cause. MODE OF TAKING.--These birds may be caught during the whole of the summer with nooses and springes baited with cherries, red currants, or elderberries. They go also very readily to the water trap, from seven to nine in the morning, and in the evening a little before sunset. ATTRACTIVE QUALITIES.--"Of the inhabitants of our woods," says Buffon, "fauvettes are the most numerous and agreeable. Lively, nimble, always in motion, they seem occupied only with play and pleasure; as their accents express only joy, it is a pretty sight to watch them sporting, pursuing, and enticing each other; their attacks are gentle, and their combats end with a song." THE WHITE-BREAST[90] Motacilla Fruticeti, LINNÆUS; La Petite Fauvette, BUFFON; Die rostgraue Grasmücke, BECHSTEIN. This bird, which is but little known, resembles in most points the preceding, but its figure is smaller and its plumage darker. Its length is four inches and three quarters, of which two and a half (being more than half of the whole) belong to the tail. The beak, four lines in length, is brown above and yellowish white below and on the edges; the iris dark brown; the feet, nine lines in height, are pale lead-colour; all the upper part of the body, comprising the wing-coverts, is dusky reddish grey, darker towards the head and lighter towards the rump. I have never been able to discover any difference between the plumage of the male and female.