104 CORVID.E. 



these, and other churches and colleges, had discovered that 

 the wooden labels placed near the plants, whose names they 

 bore, in the botanic garden would serve well enough for their 

 nests instead of twigs from trees, and that they possessed the 

 greater convenience of being prepared ready for use, and placed 

 very near home, A large proportion of the labels used in this 

 garden were made out of deal laths, were about nine inches 

 lone and one inch broad. To these the Jackdaws would 

 help themselves freely whenever they could do so without 

 molestation, and the extent of the garden made this a matter 

 of no great difficulty. Those who are aware how closely 

 some species of the grasses, umbelliferous plants, &c. resem- 

 ble each other, and who, consequently, know how necessary 

 it is to prefix labels to them indicating their names, will 

 readily perceive how much inconvenience arose from the 

 Jackdaws'* appropriation of the labels ; and this especially 

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

 shaft of one chimney in Free School Lane, which was close 

 beside the botanic garden, no less than eighteen dozen of 

 these labels were taken out and brought to Mr. Arthur Biggs, 

 the curator of the botanic garden, who received and counted 

 them. Of the mass of materials sometimes collected for the 

 nest by this species, I have evidence in a letter from Charles 

 Anderson, Esq. of Lea, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, 

 who says, that a Jackdaw began its nest on a step of a stone 

 staircase in Saunby Church, near Lea. The staircase is 

 spiral, and the steps narrow and steep. Finding it could not 

 get a firm base so that the nest should be flat and fit" to sit 

 on, the birds brought sticks till they piled it up five or six 

 steps, after which came a landing, and then they finished 



