Whatever doubt may exist as to the services rendered to man by the Sparrow and Chaffinch, about the Goldfinch there can be no difference of opinion. The farmer has no better friend, and yet an abundance of Goldfinches on an estate is anything but a welcome sight; for it denotes abundance of its favourite food, the seeds of thistles. Where these weeds flourish, there, for the most part, Goldfinches are to be met with in considerable numbers. The French name, _Chardonneret_, denotes 'a frequenter of thistles', and the ancient Greek and Latin name for it, _Acanthis_, is of similar import; the _Acanthis_, Pliny tells us,[13] bears animosity against no living creature but the donkey, a beast which eats the flowers of thistles, and so deprives it of its food. To this dietary it adds the seeds of dandelions, centaury and other weeds, but shows a decided preference for the seeds of the compound flowers. Its nest is among the most beautiful that birds construct. One now before me is placed among the terminal branches cut from the bough of a Scotch fir which grew at an elevation of about twenty feet from the ground. It is encircled by upwards of a dozen leafy twigs which unite beneath its base, and form both a firm support and effectual shelter. The substance is composed of tufted white lichens (_Usnea_ and _Evernia_), and a few fine roots and wiry stems of garden-thyme, felted together with wool so securely, that it is scarcely possible to remove one of them without damaging the whole. With these is intermixed a piece of worsted, and a thread of sewing cotton; a few horsehairs succeed, and the whole of the interior is thickly matted with the white silky down of the coltsfoot. Other nests vary in the materials employed, moss being sometimes used instead of white lichen, and willow-cotton or feathers instead of the down of the coltsfoot. Thistle-down is sometimes named as the material of the lining; but this must be under unusual circumstances, that substance being generally unattainable in spring. Besides fir-trees, the apple and elm are often selected by Goldfinches to build their nests in, and they not unfrequently resort to any low tree in a hedge or shrubbery, also to young oak-trees. In autumn, Goldfinches assemble in flocks of from ten to twenty or more, and resort to waste places, or the borders of fields, where thistles abound, and it is hard to imagine a prettier sight than a party of these innocent and brilliant hunters, perching, all heedless of spines and prickles, on the thistle heads, plucking out the seeds with the pappus attached, and cleverly separating the former from their appendage. While thus employed, they seem to take it for granted that no one will molest them, but continue their useful labour, twittering pleasantly all the while, until the spectator comes within a few yards of them, when they fly off like butterflies to another prickly bed.