PERCHING BIRDS. 111 
was, singularly enough, ¢hosen every year, and some- 
times twice in the season, as the site for a nest. The 
stove was only used every fortnight, and in this time the 
nest was built and some eggs always laid, but I never 
knew the parents bring up a brood, for the smoking of 
the stove always led to the obstruction being discovered 
and removed; and sometimes I have found the eggs 
quite baked with the heat. 
The space underneath the tiles of my own house was 
generally occupied by a pair or two of sparrows, and 
hearing one day a very noisy commotion on the roof, 
and seeing numerous birds flying to and fro in apparent 
trepidation, as if some calamity had befallen them, I was 
convinced something was the matter, and procuring a 
ladder I mounted to the spot, and at once discovered 
the reason for all the outcry. One of the owners of a 
nest underneath the tiles—the female—in passing 
through the small aperture leading to her domicile, and 
which at the lower end tapered quickly, had evidently 
slipped, and her neck had become so securely wedged 
between the tiles that escape was impossible. Her dying 
struggles attracted her neighbours, who with great good- 
will had done their best to extricate her from her un- 
fortunate position ; their zeal, however, was greater than 
their discretion, for they had pulled and tugged so 
earnestly that, when I arrived on the scene, hardly a 
feather was left on the body, which of course was 
lifeless. 
I remember another similar instance, and on the 
same roof too, where a young one in leaving the nest 
had got its leg entangled in a loop of a piece of worsted 
which was amongst the materials composing the nest. 
It vainly tried to free itself, and, as in the former in- 
