This elegant and beautiful little species ranks itself amongst my list of favourites. It visits this country the beginning of April, and leaves it in August, or the beginning of September. It is generally to be found in summer amongst tall trees in woods and plantations, where it is readily detected on its arrival, by a shrill shaking sort of note that may be heard at a great distance, and cannot be confounded with any other bird. On its first arrival it sings the greater part of the day, and continues its song, more or less, through the summer, except at the time it is engaged in feeding its young. Its nest is built on the ground in a thicket amongst moss and dead leaves, so that it is impossible to find it without watching one of the old ones to the nest, which is easily done when they have young. They may either be tamed when old, or reared from the nest, and are not difficult to be caught when young with a little bird-lime at the end of a fishing-rod, as may several other species of this interesting group. As the present species feeds entirely upon insects when wild, the greater part of which it catches on the wing, it will be useless to give it any sort of fruit or berry; but bread and milk, bruised hemp-seed and bread, with bits of fresh lean meat cut very small and mixed up in it, will be its general food. It is also very fond of the yolk of an egg boiled hard, and crumbled small, or stirred up with the point of a knife that it may peck it out of the shell as it likes. Sometimes these birds are apt to get off their other food, and will live on egg several days; at such a time if a few flies could be procured for them, it would be the most likely to restore their appetite. THE GRASSHOPPER BIRD. [Illustration] Locustella avicula, RAY; Sylvia locustella, LATHAM; L'Alouette locustelle, BUFFON; Der Fleuschrechensanger, MEYER. This species is less than the white-throat; length five inches and a half; weight about three drachms and a quarter. The bill is dusky above, whitish beneath; irides light hazel. The whole upper parts of the bird are olivaceous brown; the middle of each feather dusky, except on the back of the neck, which gives it a pretty spotted appearance; the tail is much cuneiform, and the feathers somewhat pointed, which is a very marked and peculiar character in this species; the outer feather being full an inch shorter than the middle ones, and nearly rounded at the tips, the wing remarkably short, reaching very little beyond the base of the tail; legs very pale brown; claws light-horn colour; hind claw short and crooked. In shape, the grasshopper warbler very much resembles the sedge-bird; is rather inferior in size, and at once distinguished by its spotted back. MR. SWEET'S ACCOUNT OF THE GRASSHOPPER BIRD.