TOMTITS DESTROYED AS VERMIN. 161 



various creatures included in the denomination of 

 vermin. In former times it may have been found 

 necessary to keep under or reduce the numbers 

 of many predaceous animals, which, in a thickly- 

 wooded country, with an inferior population, might 

 have been productive of injury; and we even find 

 parliamentary statutes enacted for this purpose : 

 but now, however, our losses by such means have 

 become a very petty grievance : our gamekeepers 

 do their part in removing pests of this nature, and 

 the plough and the axe leave little harbour for the 

 few that escape ; and thus we war on the smaller 

 races of creation, and call them vermin. An 

 item passed in one of our late churchwardens' 

 accounts was, c for seventeen dozen of tomtits' 

 heads !" In what evil hour, and for what crime, this 

 poor little bird (parus caruleus) could have in- 

 curred the anathema of a parish, it is difficult to 

 conjecture. I know hardly any small animal that 

 lives a more precarious life than the little blue 

 tomtit. Indeed it is marvellous how any of the 

 insectivorous birds, that pass their winter with us, 

 are supplied with food during inclement seasons, 

 unless they have greater powers of abstinence 

 than we are aware of; but our small birds are 

 generally much more active than those of a larger 

 bulk: the common wren is all animation, its actions 

 and movements bespeak hilarity and animal spirits ; 

 and that minute creature, too, the golden-crested 

 wren, is always in motion, flitting from the yew 

 hedge to the fir, or darting away to taller trees 



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