120 SKETCHES OF BIRD LIFE. 



ally from its allies of the genus Parus (as long ago 

 pointed out by the German naturalist Koch) ; and 

 nowadays ornithologists seem pretty well agreed in 

 regarding it as generically distinct. The particulars 

 in which it differs have been so well detailed by the 

 author just referred to, in his Saugethiere und V'dgel 

 Baierns (p. 199), that it will be unnecessary here to 

 point them out. 



As it rarely, if ever, happens that there is a 

 modification of structure without some modification 

 also of habit, so with the Long-tailed Tit we find 

 this rule holds good, and note accordingly, amongst 

 other things, how very differently its nest is con- 

 structed as compared with the nest of a typical 

 Parus. Instead of being a loosely -made cradle, 

 concealed from view in some hole or crevice, it is a 

 most carefully -made and beautiful structure, sym- 

 metrical in shape, and placed externally in the 

 slender fork of some tree at some height from the 

 ground, amid the denser foliage of a fir branch, or 

 in the centre of a thick thorn. 



Those who have enjoyed the pleasures of bird's- 

 nesting (and who has not in schoolboy days, at 

 least, if not in after-life) will recollect with what 





