386 INSECTIVOR^. 



impropriety, be placed among the birds to which that name 

 is given, only they are small birds, and insects, in some 

 stages of their existence, form their chief food 



It may seem a very secondary matter, in so far as popular 

 and practical knowledge is concerned, in what part of the 

 system any genus of birds may happen to be placed ; but in 

 the case of the tit it is not unimportant. A bird that eats 

 seeds is a marked bird with the cultivator. Whenever it 

 makes its appearance on the ground in gardens, it is in quest 

 of the newly-sown small seeds ; and if it happens to twitter 

 about among the sprays in the spring, then it is nipping off 

 the buds, and destroying the beauty of the summer, and the 

 wealth of the autumn. The tits do come to those places at 

 those times : and though they come to preserve rather than 

 to destroy, they come with the brand of seed and bud eating 

 birds affixed to them, and, as such, they are destroyed. 

 Justice to the birds, and also to those who unwisely persecute 

 them thus, demands that they should be called by the name 

 of that food to which they are most partial, or in search of 

 which they are not only more assiduous and successful, but 

 employed more in the proper season, than many of the birds 

 which stand on the muster-roll as insectivorous, and especially 

 more than any of the warblers. These retire, leaving the 

 insects to deposit their eggs in the buds ; and before they 

 return, these eggs have been hatched, and the mischief both 

 to shoot and blossom has been done. The tits, on the other 

 hand, watch the buds, more especially the fruit buds, from 

 the time of their formation in the autumn, till they begin 

 to expand in the spring ; and the number of the eggs and 

 larvae of the tortrices and other insects which they pick up, 

 would, if left, be quite sufficient to ruin the crops and dis- 

 figure the trees. 



The larvae of those lurking moths not only do mischief 

 themselves, but are also the cause of mischief being done 



