WILES OF BIRDS. 163 



cient payment when the groat was a coin. How- 

 ever powerful the stimulus was then, we yet find it 

 a sufficient inducement to our idle bat-fowling boys 

 to bring baskets of poor toms' heads to our church- 

 warden's door. 



The wiles and stratagems of every creature are 

 deserving of attention, because they are, for the 

 most part, the impulse of the weak and the feeble, 

 instinctive efforts to preserve their own existence, 

 or more generally to secure or defend that of their 

 offspring. Few are able to effect these objects by 

 bodily power ; but all creatures probably exert a 

 faculty of some kind to ward off injury from 

 their young, though not observed by, or manifested 

 to us. This poor little blue tomtit, which has 

 neither beak, claws, nor any portion of strength to 

 defend itself from the weakest assailant, will never- 

 theless make trial by menace to scare the intruder 

 from its nest. It builds almost universally in the 

 hole of a wall or a tree ; and its size enables it 

 to creep through so small a crevice, that it is pretty 

 well secured from all annoyances but those of 

 bird nesting boys : and these little plunderers the 

 sitting bird endeavours to scare away, by hissing 

 and puffing in a very extraordinary manner from 

 the bottom of the hole, as soon as a finger is intro- 

 duced, and so perfectly unlike the usual voice of a 

 bird, that many a young intruder is deterred from 

 prosecuting any farther search, lest he should rouse 

 the vengeance of some lurking snake or adder. 

 They who have seen much of birds, and attended 



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