648 NUTMEG-BIRD 
very plentiful anywhere, it is generally distributed in suitable 
localities throughout its range—those localities being such as afford 
it a sufficient supply of food, consisting during the greater part of 
the year of insects, which it diligently seeks on the boles and 
larger limbs of old trees; but in autumn and winter it feeds on 
nuts, beech-mast, the stones of, yew-berries and hard seeds. Being 
of a bold disposition, and the trees favouring its mode of life often 
growing near houses, it will become on slight encouragement familiar 
with men; and its neat attire of ash-grey and warm buff, together 
with its sprightly gestures, render it an attractive visitor. It generally 
makes its nest in a hollow branch, plastering up the opening with 
clay, leaving only a circular hole just large enough to afford entrance 
and exit; and the interior contains a bed of dry leaves or the filmy 
flakes of the inner bark of a fir or cedar, on which the eggs are 
laid. Corsica has a Nuthatch peculiar to itself and remarkable for 
its black crown, the S. whiteheadi of Dr. Sharpe, and in the Levant 
occurs a third species, S. syriaca, with somewhat different habits, as 
it haunts rocks rather than trees; while four or five representatives 
of the European arboreal species have their respective ranges from 
Asia Minor to the Himalayas and Northern China. North America 
possesses nearly as many ; but, curiously enough, the geographical 
difference of coloration is just the reverse of what it is in Europe— 
the species with a deep rufous breast, S. canadensis, being that which 
has the most northern range, while the white-bellied S. carolinensis, 
with its western form, S. aculcata, inhabits more southern latitudes. 
The Ethiopian Region seems to have no representative of the group, 
unless it be the Hypositta corallirostris of Madagascar. Cailisitta and 
Dendrophila are nearly allied genera, inhabiting the Indian Region, 
and remarkable for their beautiful blue plumage; but some doubt 
may for the present be entertained as to the affinity of the Australian 
Sittella, with four or five species, found in one or another part of 
that continent, which doubt is increased by the late Mr. W. A. 
Forbes’s discovery (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1882, pp. 569-571) that the genera 
Acanthidositta (SPINEBILL) and Xenicus, peculiar to New Zealand, 
. and hitherto generally placed in the Family Sittidx, belong really 
to the Mesomyodian group and are therefore far removed from it. 
The true Si/tide seem to be intermediate between the Paridx 
(T1TMousE) and the Certhiidz (TREECREEPER), and some authors 
comprehend them in either one or the other of those groups. 
NUTMEG-BIRD, the dealers’ name in common use for J/uma 
punctulata (COWRY-BIRD, page 108), but apparently of somewhat 
recent origin. 
