TITS. 385 



sounds. Every one knows how sweet the music of the waits 

 is when it breaks one's sleep in a long December night, 

 though if day were dawned, and the musicians were seen, 

 it might prove to be sorry or even intolerable scraping. 

 The song of the nightingale, heard as above mentioned (the 

 most favourable way of hearing it), borrows something from 

 the same cause, although it certainly has less need to borrow. 

 The nightingale is local, confined to the chalky, gravelly, 

 and -partially to the clayey soils, and shunning the rocky 

 country and also the marshes. The cause of this restriction 

 is rather obscure, and in all probability it is complex. The 

 places which it frequents are certainly those that abound 

 most in lepidopterous insects, whether moths or butterflies, 

 and within them it affects most the places where those 

 insects appear in the greatest abundance and variety. But 

 we are not warranted in concluding that food is the only 

 circumstance that regulates its distribution ; for within the 

 places that it does frequent, there are favourite spots, and 

 they are always those spots at which the air is most balmy, 

 and the whole vegetation the most moist and kindly. To 

 the margins of waters it has no objection, but rather the 

 reverse ; but it does not so much affect marshy grounds as 

 those where the soil is retentive, the evaporation rank, and 

 the vegetation austere. Indeed, the clearness of its song is 

 said to vary much with the character of its locality. 



TITS (Parus). 



Though the tits (or tit-mice) are often classed with gra- 

 minivorous birds, and have hard bills, harder, indeed, than 

 many of the species which deserve to be so classed, as feeding 

 more upon the seeds of vegetables than upon animal sub- 

 stances, yet they are not more entitled to the appellation of 

 graminivorous than some of the warblers, if, indeed, they be 

 as much. They are, in fact, omnivorous, and might, without 



VOL. I. 2 C 



