388 INSECTIVOR.E. 



with all the finer fruit trees, especially if the buds were not 

 cleared by birds ; and among these birds, the garden-fre- 

 quenting tits stand as eminent as rooks do among those 

 larger birds which clear the fields from insects. Indeed, 

 different as they are in size and in many of their characters, 

 the tits and the crows resemble each other not a little in 

 the form of their bills, as well as in their miscellaneous and 

 indiscriminate feeding, and also in the firmness and strongly 

 contrasted tints of their plumage, and their disposition to 

 kill and eat young and weakly birds. 



The bills of the tits much more nearly resemble miniatures 

 of the bill of the magpie than they do that of either of the 

 insectivorous or the seed-eating little birds. They are small, 

 short, rather compressed, very firm and strong, and pointed 

 at the tip. The birds have very free, and, in proportion to 

 their size, powerful action of the neck, and they strike with 

 the point of the bill as with a pick-axe or chisel, and do not 

 peck or strike as the insectivorous birds do, or grind hard 

 substances between the oblique tomia, like the birds which 

 feed on grain. 



By this action of the beak, they can dig very successfully 

 into the crevices of bark, or the folds and hybernacula of 

 buds, and extract thence the larvae, of which they are such 

 incessant and general destroyers. When they eat seeds which 

 have hard testa or coats, they do not crush them, but tear 

 them in pieces by repeated strokes of the bill, as is done by 

 the nuthatch ; and they also kill young and weak birds by 

 striking them on the head till they have broken the skull, the 

 contents of which they immediately devour. Some of their 

 habits, and also the command which those species that fre- 

 quent trees have of themselves upon the bark, would lead to 

 their classification with the creepers and nuthatch, only their 

 feet are different, and they have other habits that do not be- 

 long to those birds. They also capture prey by the snap of 



