THIRD DAY. 69 



by the country people, namely, the tit- 

 mouse ; and yet a pair of these little 

 creatures, if undisturbed, will almost keep 

 a fair-sized garden free from insects and 

 reptiles. A friend of mine, who lives in 

 the neighbourhood of London, occupies 

 one of a row of houses, the gardens of 

 which, as usual, adjoin each other. His 

 neighbour, a door or two off, an idle 

 fellow, often amuses himself by shooting 

 the small birds, and last year he kept up 

 this manly pastime so vigorously, that not 

 even a sparrow could show itself on his 

 premises. Summer came, and with it 

 swarms of that destructive reptile the 

 small green caterpillar, which literally ate 

 up everything in the garden of the cockney 

 sportsman. Not so with my friend's gar- 

 den, the fruit in which was unusually fine 

 and abundant, a circumstance which he 

 attributes entirely to the fact of a pair of 

 the smaller species of titmouse having made 



