[75] The means of always having a plentiful supply of meal worms is to fill a large earthenware or brown stone jar with wheat bran, barley or oatmeal, and put into it some pieces of sugar paper or old shoe leather. Into each of these jars, of about two quarts in size, half a pint of meal worms is thrown (these may be bought at any baker's or miller's), and by leaving them quiet for three months, covered with a bit of woollen cloth soaked in beer, or merely in water, they will change into beetles (_Tenebrio Molitor_, Linnæus). These insects soon propagate by eggs, which renew and increase the number of maggots so much that one such jar will maintain a nightingale.--AUTHOR. [76] Many persons who are not in a situation to buy ants' eggs (improperly so called, since they are the pupæ in their cocoons), will doubtless be glad to know the method used for getting them out of the ant-hill. A fine sunny day in summer is chosen, and, provided with a shovel we begin by gently uncovering a nest of the large wood ants (_Formica rufa_, Linnæus), till we arrive at the eggs; these are then taken away, and placed in the sun, in the middle of a cloth whose corners are turned up over little branches well covered with leaves. The ants, in order to protect the eggs from the heat of the sun, quickly remove them under the shelter which is prepared for them. In this manner they are easily obtained freed from dirt, and from the ants also. In the absence of a cloth a smooth place is chosen, around which some small furrows are cut, over which the branches are laid, which leads to the same result.--AUTHOR. [77] English bird-catchers also express the phrases of the nightingale by words, or particular names, _sweet_, _jug_, _sweet_, _pipe rattle_, _swetswat_, _swaty_, _water bubble_, _skeg_, _skeg_, _whitlow_, _whitlow_, and the like. [78] I possess a nightingale which repeats these drawling melancholy notes often thirty or even fifty times. Many pronounce _gu, guy, gui_, and others _qu, quy, qui_.--AUTHOR. [79] These syllables are pronounced in a sharper clearer manner than the preceding _lu, lu_, &c. [80] However difficult, or even impossible, it may be to express this song upon an instrument (excepting, however, the jay call, made of tin, on which is placed a piece of birch cut in a cross, and which is held between the tongue and the palate), yet it is very true that the accompaniment of a good piano produces the most agreeable effect.--AUTHOR.