THE NATURALIST.
THE NIGHTINGALE.
The nightingale is universally admitted to be the most enchanting of warblers; and many might be tempted to encage the mellifluous songster, but for the supposed difficulty of procuring proper food for it. In the village of Cossey, near Norwich, an individual has had a nightingale in cage since last April; it is very healthy and lively, and has been wont to charm its owner with its sweet and powerful strains. The bird appears about two years old: it has gone through this year's moulting. It is kept in a darksome cage, with three sides wood, and the fourth wired. The bottom of the cage is covered with moss. Its constant food is a paste, which is composed of fresh beef or mutton, scraped fine with a knife, and in equal portions mixed with the yolk of an egg boiled hard. The owner, however, about once a-day, gives it also a mealworm; he does not think this last dainty to be necessary, but only calculated to keep the nightingale in better spirits. The paste should be changed before it becomes sour and tainted.
PHILOMELOS.
NOTES
Abridged from the Magazine of Natural History.
Silkworm.—(By a Correspondent.)—It has occurred to me, and I have not seen it remarked elsewhere, as a striking and interesting peculiarity of this insect, that it does not wander about as all other caterpillars do, but that it is nearly stationary in the open box or tray where it is placed and fed: after consuming the immediate supply of mulberry leaves, it waits patiently for more being provided. I apprehend this cannot be said of any other insect whatever. This docile quality of the worm harmonizes beautifully with its vast importance to mankind, in furnishing a material which affords our most elegant and beautiful, if not most useful, of garments. The same remark applies to the insect in the fly or moth state, the female being quite incapable of flight, and the male, although of a much lighter make, and more active, can fly but very imperfectly; the latter circumstance ensures to us the eggs for the following season, and thus completes the adaptation of the insect, in its different stages, to the useful purpose it is destined to fulfil for our advantage.
The Possibility of introducing and naturalizing that beautiful Insect the Fire Fly.—It abounds not only in Canada, where the winters are so severe, but in the villages of the Vaudois in Piedmont. These are a poor people much attached to the English: and, at 10s. a dozen, would, no doubt, deliver in Paris, in boxes properly contrived, any number of these creatures, in every stage of their existence, and even in the egg, should that be desired: and if twenty dozen were turned out in different parts of England, there cannot remain a doubt but that, in a few years, they would be common through the country; and, in our summer evenings, be exquisitely beautiful.