BY THE STUDY FIRE 169 



shells when their original contents had been 

 pecked clean), and the usual bread-crumbs and 

 other scraps from the breakfast- table. I must 

 provide hemp-seed for the seed-eaters, and nuts. 

 Also fruit, when we have a good enough year 

 for apples to provide a surplus ; and, above 

 all, a bath. Then perhaps more sorts of birds 

 will come and keep company with me as I 

 write at that window. Of the six who do come, 

 taken in order of preferment, I put the tits 

 first. A busy blue- tit always comes early, to 

 investigate. He is generally to be seen before 

 breakfast, if I have got over early enough 

 the conviction that middle-aged folk are, like 

 dormice, intended by nature to sleep snugly 

 through the winter months, instead of forsaking 

 a well-warmed bed to shave by candlelight 

 in a cold room. The blue-tit can be counted 

 on directly after breakfast. Two cole- tits, 

 slightly differing from each other in their 

 markings, arrive soon afterwards. Later in 

 the day a big ox-eyed tit turns up, very definite 

 and brilliant in colouring. I noticed that the 

 smaller tits gave him a wide berth, so I looked 

 him up in a book to find out the reason. It 

 seems that he is fond of picking the brains of 

 smaller birds, which probably accounts for his 

 unpopularity. I have known eminent men in 



