110 CORVlDjE. 



five colleges within a short flight of it. The Jackdaws 

 inhabiting these, and other churches and colleges, had dis- 

 covered 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 pre- 

 pared ready for use, and placed very near home. A large 

 proportion of the labels used in this garden were made out 

 of deal laths, being about nine inches long 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., resemble 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 Jack- 

 daws' 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 ascer- 

 tained. 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 re- 

 ceived and counted them. Of the mass of materials some- 

 times collected for the nest by this species, I had 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 Sauiiby 

 Church, near Lea. The staircase is spiral, and the steps 

 narrow and steep. Finding it could not get a firm base so 



