Birds of an Oxford College 89 



from its own microscopic standpoint ; and it is amaz- 

 ing how much detail and lively adventure can be 

 crowded into the inquiring journey of a pair of 

 cole-tits in springtime over a few square feet of stone 

 in any corner of the buildings. These titmice can 

 find a passage through crevices that seem far too 

 narrow to receive them, small as they are ; and the 

 holes which they choose for nesting are often the 

 merest chinks, apparently impassable for a mouse. 

 In retired corners of the college buildings there cling 

 at various altitudes stray lengths of rusty wire, 

 coated with washings from the crumbling stone, 

 that surprise the eye of the student of university 

 customs with unmistakable evidence of a former 

 instalment of bells. These wires hang now as 

 emblems of ancient silence, and the scouts are dust 

 who answered or ignored their appeal. But nature, 

 in her long leisure, turns all things to some new use ; 

 and the holes pierced in the walls for the bell- wires, 

 and enlarged in many subsequent winters by the fret- 

 ting mists and rain, now provide the questing titmice 

 with the snuggest of all their nesting-places. 



The cole tits live out the greater part of their 

 lives in that unobtrusive indifference to man which 

 at times conveys the impression that, with their 

 minutely concentrated vision, they fail to dis- 

 tinguish him. Only when they fear that their 

 nest or young are threatened do they suddenly 

 display intense consternation and anger at the 

 movements of the giant form. But all larger birds 

 in inhabited places are keenly aware of human 

 identity, except before they are fully fledged ; and 



