398 Habits of the JacMaXv. 



garden, when they observed the gardeners occupied in another, 

 as was often the case in their attending to the plants in the 

 glass houses, &c. To describe the mode of action in all by that 

 of one : a jackdaw would grasp a label edgewise in its beak, 

 and draw it out of the soil ; and, as this was pretty friable 

 and light, it could usually extract it with but little difficulty : 

 but where the label happened to stand in a more cohesive 

 soil, or to have been more deeply infixed, it would pull the 

 label first to one side, then to the opposite one ; and, by per- 

 severing in this process of leverage, either effect the extrac- 

 tion of it, or tire itself and leave it. As soon as it had 

 extracted one, it proceeded to balance it in its mouth ; letting 

 it fall, and picking it up again, until it had ascertained the 

 place at which it could be held in equilibrium ; when it flew 

 off with it. Those who are aware how closely some species 

 of the grasses, garlic, umbelliferous plants, &c, resemble each 

 other, and who, consequently, know how needful it is to pre- 

 fix labels to them as remembrancers of their names, will 

 readily perceive that much inconvenience arose from the 

 jackdaws' appropriation of the labels ; and this, especially, 

 when they removed, as they sometimes did, the labels from 

 sown seeds, as the plants arising from these seeds must, in 

 some species, grow for a year or more before their names 

 could be ascertained. I cannot give a probable idea of the 

 number of labels which the jackdaws annually removed ; but 

 have more than once been told, by persons who had ascended 

 the tower of Great St. Mary's church, and the towers or 

 steeples of other churches, that wooden labels, bearing bo- 

 tanical inscriptions, were abounding in these places. The 

 house of the late Dr. (I think, a Dr.) Kerrich, in Free- 

 school Lane, was close beside the botanic garden ; and the 

 shaft of one of the chimneys of his house was stopped up 

 below, or otherwise rendered a fit place of resort for jack- 

 daws. From this chimney-shaft Dr. Kerrich's man-servant 

 got out, on one occasion, eighteen dozen of the said deal labels; 

 and these he brought to Mr. Arthur Biggs, the curator of the 

 botanic garden: I saw them delivered and received. This 

 fact, however, gives very little information as to the number 

 of labels annually removed from the garden by the jackdaws, 

 as I am quite without a knowledge of the number of the years 

 which intervened the jackdaws' deposition of the first label 

 into the chimney-shaft and the withdrawal of the eighteen 

 dozen. This number of labels, and the fact of the occurrence 

 of plant-labels on other buildings about the town, prove that, 

 in general terms, the aggregate of labels lost from time to 

 time could not be an inconsiderable one. — J. D. 



