OF SELBORNE. 181 



heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick 

 out the aurelias of the genus of Phryganece, &c. 2 



Hedge sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard 

 weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweep- 

 ings : and in mild weather they procure worms, which 

 are stirring every month in the year, as any one may 

 see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle 

 to a grass-plot on any mild winter's night. Redbreasts 

 and wrens in the winter haunt out-houses, stables, 

 and barns, where they find spiders and flies that have 

 laid themselves up during the cold season. But the 

 grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that 

 infinite profusion of aureliae of the Ordo Lepidoptera, 

 which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; 

 to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings ; and is 

 found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and 

 even in the ground itself. 



Every species of titmouse winters with us; they have 

 what I call a kind of intermediate bill between the hard 

 and the soft, between the Linnaean genera of Fringilla 

 and Motacilla. One species alone spends its whole 

 time in the woods and fields, never retreating for suc- 

 cour in the severest seasons to houses and neighbour- 

 hoods ; and that is the delicate long-tailed titmouse, 

 which is almost as minute as the golden-crowned wren : 

 but the blue titmouse, or nun (Parus cceruleus), the cole- 

 mouse (Parus ater), the great black-headed titmouse 

 (Fringillago*), and the marsh titmouse, (Paruspalustris), 

 all resort, at times, to buildings ; and in hard weather 

 particularly. The great titmouse, driven by stress of 

 weather, much frequents houses, and, in deep snows, I 

 have seen this bird, while it hung with its back down- 

 wards (to my no small delight and admiration), draw 

 straws lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses, 

 in order to pull out the flies that were concealed be- 



2 See Derham's Physico-Theology, p. 235. 



3 [Parus mqjor, LINN.] 



