OBSERVATIONS.--This bird arrives among us towards the end of April. It frequents hilly places covered with bushes and briars, among which it builds its nest, about four or five feet from the ground, and among the thickest foliage. The eggs, five in number, are whitish, mottled with bluish brown, and speckled with dark maroon. Incubation lasts but thirteen days. At first the young are fed with the smallest caterpillars, afterwards with larger ones, flies, and other insects; but as soon as they can fly they accompany their parents in search of cherries, red currants, elderberries, and, later in the season, the berries of the service tree. The family departs together in the month of September, and then some are taken in nooses or springes baited with elderberries. But this species is not much valued, and does not therefore excite the attention of bird-catchers, who give the preference to the fauvette. However, this bird is an excellent singer, and though his voice is not so clear and flute-like as that of the fauvette, yet by skilfully introducing his call into his warble, he produces a very striking and agreeable variety. This species is fed and treated like the preceding, but with still greater care, for it is even more delicate. With all my care I have never been able to preserve it more than two years at the utmost: the difficulty, however, does not appear to proceed from the diet, for being caught in the autumn it soon gets accustomed to the food of the nightingale, by first giving it the berries which it selects in a state of freedom. THE DUNNOCK, OR HEDGE SPARROW. Accentor modularis, BECHSTEIN; La Fauvette d'hiver, ou Traine Buisson, BUFFON; Die Braunelle, BECHSTEIN. This species, which in its gait resembles the wren, seems also a link between its own species and that of the lark, for it does not confine itself to insects; it eats all sorts of small seeds, such as those of the poppy and the grasses. Its length is five inches and a quarter, two and a quarter of which belong to the tail. The beak, five lines in length, is very sharp, black, whitish at the tip, and the inside rose-colour; the iris purple; the legs, nine lines in height, are yellowish flesh-colour; the narrow head is, together with the neck, dark ash-colour, marked with very dark brown, like that of the sparrow; the breast a deep slate-colour. The breast of the female is lighter and bluish grey; she has also more brown spots on her head.