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 



