396 INSECTIVOILE. 



centre, and never so completely lose their lateral branches, 

 and where young ones have space and air to spring up. 



In a fir plantation, which is neither so low as to partake 

 of the mushroom growth of pines (especially pinus sylvestris) 

 upon too rich soils, or too inland and upland, there is a suc- 

 cession of birds. Linnets and other brake birds come to 

 them as long as they are mere bushes ; but the note of the 

 cuckoo is not heard in them. After a while, the cole-tit 

 becomes one of their most plentiful inhabitants ; and by that 

 time the cuckoo perches and sings on the margin. A few 

 years longer, and the^ ring-dove moans in the tops of the 

 trees, which have then begun to open towards the surface of 

 the ground, and the cover for the brake birds, and nesting- 

 places for all birds that breed hideling and near the earth, 

 are gone. The cuckoo is then heard less frequently, unless 

 there are coppices of deciduous trees, or young pines come 

 up in succession, in the vicinity. If the trees form a belt 

 between rich grounds, the magpie, though he loves the 

 a home " trees better, will sometimes come a little after the 

 wood-pigeon ; and if the plantation is deep and secluded, the 

 jay will, perhaps, come a little earlier. To all these succeeds 

 the rook, which nestles in the mature trees, with the long 

 boles clear of branches, and he quits them not till they are 

 cut down or perish in the lapse of time. 



The cole-tit is usually described as nestling in the holes of 

 trees and of walls; but in the above-mentioned places, which, 

 as they are those in which the birds are most abundant, must 

 be considered as the most natural to them, there are no such 

 holes in which they can nestle. Walls there are none ; and 

 pines do not fall into holes in which birds of any kind could 

 nestle. When they do decay, it is always first in the albur- 

 num, and they are generally barked and bleached before 

 then. In these situations it nestles something in the same 



