BLUE TIT. 205 
times, each time bringing one caterpillar, at others two or 
three, so that probably this one pair of birds destroyed six 
or seven hundred in the course of a single day. The destruction 
of the Blue-cap by the farmer or gardener is an act of 
economical suicide. Well has the author of the book of 
Keclesiasticus written, ‘all things are double one against 
another, and God has made nothing imperfect.’ 
The ‘Journal of a Naturalist’ records the following:—‘I 
was lately exceedingly pleased in witnessing the maternal care 
and intelligence of this bird; for the poor thing had its young 
ones in a hole of a wall, and the nest had been nearly all 
drawn out of the crevice by the paw of a cat, and part of 
its brood devoured. In revisiting its family, the bird discovered 
a portion of it remaining, though wrapped up and _ hidden 
in the tangled moss and feathers of their bed, and it then 
drew the whole of the nest back into the place from whence 
it had been taken, unrolled and resettled the remaining little 
ones, fed them with the usual attentions, and finally succeeded 
in rearing them. ‘The parents of even this reduced family 
laboured with great perseverance to supply its wants, one or 
the other of them bringing a grub, caterpillar, or some insect, 
at intervals of less than a minute through the day, and probably 
in the earlier part of the morning more frequently; but if 
we allow that they brought food to the hole every minute 
for fourteen hours, and provided for their own wants also, it 
will admit of perhaps a thousand grubs a day, for the re- 
quirements of one, and that a diminished brood; and gives 
us some comprehension of the infinite number requisite for 
the summer nutriment of our soft-billed birds, and the great 
distances gone over by such as have young ones, in their 
numerous trips from hedge to tree in the hours specified, 
when they have full broods to support.’ 
Meyer renders the note of the Blue Tomtit by the words 
‘zit, zit;’ ‘tzitzee,’ and ‘tsee, tsee, tsirr,’ which is, I think, as 
near as it can be approached; and shews that a comparison 
of it by one of my schoolfellows to the words in the Latin 
Grammar ‘me te se, preter que ne ve,’ was far from being 
Inapt, as in truth it is not. Macgillivray gives us ‘chica, 
chica, chee chee,’ as also ‘chirr-r-r.. It has also a sort of 
scream—a signal of alarm, and the hen bird, when sitting on 
the nest, hisses at any enemy, and spits like a kitten, ruffling 
up her feathers at the same time. ‘Many a young intruder,’ 
says Mr. Knapp, ‘is deterred from prosecuting any farther 
