9 6 SKETCHES OF BIRD LIFE. 



berry- moth, while it also preys on the grubs of 

 wood -boring beetles, including Scolytus destructor, 

 the worst foe of the elm. 



Mr. Weir, who has contributed so many interest- 

 ing notes to Macgillivray's work on British Birds, 

 communicated the fact that he once watched the 

 actions of a pair of Blue Tits for an entire day 

 during the time that they were engaged in rearing 

 their young. He took the trouble to count the 

 number of times they brought food to the nest, and 

 found that they laboured incessantly for seventeen 

 hours out of the twenty-four, during which time they 

 fed their young 475 times, sometimes bringing a 

 single caterpillar, at other times two or three 

 small ones. After such testimony as this, we may 

 well deplore, with Knapp, the short-sightedness 

 of the churchwardens of his parish which prompted 

 them to pass an item of payment in their accounts 

 "for seventeen dozen of torn-tits' heads." In 

 summer, he admits, it will certainly regale itself on 

 our garden pease, and shells a pod of " marrow- 

 fats " with great dexterity ; but this, he believes, is 

 the extent of its criminality. " Yet," says he, " for 

 this venial indulgence do we proscribe it, rank it 



