402 INSEOTIVORJE. 



is not procurable without incessant activity. When the 

 insects in the larva or the winged state and the little spiders 

 fail, there still remains a plentiful supply of eggs ; and the 

 absence of the leaves makes the niches in which these are 

 concealed, whether that be a silken nest or a gummy case, 

 much more easily seen than during the season of even that 

 decaying verdure in which the eggs are deposited. Thus, the 

 concealment of the leaves, while the germs of broods for the 

 future year are committed to the trees, is of advantage both 

 to the preyers and the prey. While the foliage remains, the 

 birds cannot easily find the eggs ; and thus they are obliged 

 to hunt for the grown insects, many of which they capture 

 merely in time to save them from perishing in the course of 

 nature, which they in general do very soon after the eggs are 

 deposited. The insects are so much more numerous than 

 the birds, that notwithstanding the captures which these 

 make, the eggs that are deposited would produce probably a 

 hundred times more than the stock of the former year ; and 

 minute as the individuals are, and few as are all the races 

 that are found in the haunts of the long-tailed tit, as com- 

 pared with those in the whole country, yet, if the whole 

 deposit of one year were to come to maturity, the injury 

 which they would do to vegetation would be very great, and 

 their numbers would bring about their own extermination ; 

 but when the leaves and herbage, under cover of which the 

 eggs are deposited, are in the course of nature cleared away, 

 as many of these are disclosed to the acute vision of the bird 

 as serves for a winter supply ; and in procuring that, the 

 birds display the same energy, and the same curious atti- 

 tudes, as the crested wrens, with which they are not 

 unfrequently found in company. 



It is probable, however, that though the bird is a little 

 larger than the golden-crested wren (it is very nearly the 

 same as the fiery-crested), it feeds upon smaller prey. From 



