Oology, QQ I 



entrance the bird has is close over the handle, where the slit 

 runs a little higher, to allow it to rise above its fulcrum. This 

 pump is used every hour ; and is always accompanied with 

 much noise, and violent agitation ; and, frequently, for negli- 

 gent want of Tristram Shandy's " three drops of oil," will 

 *' on its hinges grate harsh thunder : " yet the bird sits on, 

 quiet and unmolested. If the handle be lifted up, and she be 

 peeped at longer than she like, she merely puffs, blows, and 

 snorts at the curious intruder. The quantity of moss carried 

 into this receptacle of little ease would thrice fill the crown of 

 a man's hat; and on one side, to prevent any of it falling into 

 the tube or bucket, she exerts an act of reason (an article not 

 confined to, nor over-abundant in, the genus //omo), by placing 

 small sticks as props ; a material this bird never uses in her 

 regular foraminous architecture. When the young are 

 hatched, the parents feed them constantly, entering through the 

 small aperture ; as the callow brood come to days of indiscre- 

 tion, one or more will sometimes crawl to the edge, and fall 

 on the surface of the water, and so get ejected through the 

 spout ; when it greatly pleases me to see my servants replace 

 them gently in the nest, with kind soothings or facetious 

 chidings; showing that natural humanity is innate in very 

 many of the labouring classes, till effete for lack of nurture, or 

 corrupted by evil communications ; and makes me the more 

 lament and execrate that cold, callous, and ignorant opposition, 

 the coarse, big, and burly rich throw on the proper education 

 of the people ; which I most ardently pray God may speedily 

 and effectually become unlimited and universal. — JoJin F, M. 

 Dovaston. Westfelton, near Shrewsbury, May 1. 1832. 



Habits of the Marsh Titmouse (Pdrus palustris Lin.) — I 

 have been much surprised, this spring, at witnessing, in two 

 or three instances, the tenacity with which the marsh titmouse 

 attaches itself to its nest. Being in a wood near my own 

 house, I perceived a pair of these birds in one of the trees ; 

 and having seen them in the same place several times before, 

 and being desirous of finding the nest, I sat down to watch 

 their motions. After examining me on all sides, with much 

 chattering, and many gesticulations indicative of dislike and 

 suspicion, the female flew to the root of a tree three or four 

 yards off, and disappeared. As she had gone to the opposite 

 side of the tree to that on which I sat, and as there were seve- 

 ral holes about the root, I was at a loss to know in which the 

 nest was built, and began to strike the root with a stick, ex- 

 pecting her to fly out ; but nothing appeared. I then examined 

 the holes one by one ; and, whilst doing so, heard her hissing 

 and puffing from within, in such a way, that, if I had not 



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