312 CASSELL'S BOOK OF BIRDS. 



insects in their chrysalis state. All the species of Wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams, 

 near their spring-heads, where they never freeze : and, by wading, pick out the chrysalis of the genus 

 of Phryganea. 



" Hedge Sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and 

 other sweepings, and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month m the 

 year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any 

 mild winter's night. Redbreasts and Wrens in the winter haunt outhouses, stables, and barns, where 

 they find spiders and flies, that have laid themselves up during the cold season. But the grand 

 support of the soft-billed birds in the winter is that infinite profusion of chrysalids of the 

 Lepidoplera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks, to the poles and walls of 

 gardens and buildings, and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the 

 ground itself. 



•• Everv species 01 Ticmouse winters with us. They have," continues our author, " what I call an 

 interme liatt Dill, between the hard and the soft, between the Linnsean genera of Fringilla and 

 Motacilla. One species alone spends its whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating for 

 succour, in the severest seasons, to houses and neighbourhoods, and that is the delicate Long-tailed 

 Titmouse, which is almost as minute as the Golden-crowned Wren, but the Blue Titmouse or Nun 

 (Parus cantleus), the Cole Mouse {Pants ater), the Great Black-headed Titmouse (Fringillago), and 

 the Marsh Titmouse (Pants palitstris), all resort at times to buildings, and in hard weather 

 particularly. The Great Titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much frequents houses, and in deep 

 snows I have seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards (to my no small delight and 

 admiration) draw straws lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses, in order to pull out the 

 flies that were concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they quite defaced the thatch, 

 and gave it a ragged appearance. 



" The Blue Titmouse, or Nun, is a great frequenter of houses, and a general devourer. Besides 

 insects, it is very fond of flesh, for it frequently picks bones on dunghills. It is a vast admirer of 

 suet, and haunts butchers' shops. It will also pick holes in apples left on the ground, and be well 

 entertained with the seeds on the head of a sunflower. The Blue Marsh and Great Titmice will, in 

 very severe weather,, carry away barley and oat-straws from the sides of ricks. 



" How the Wheat-ear and Whin-chat support themselves in winter cannot be so easily ascer- 

 tained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and warrens, the former especially where there are 

 stone-quarries. Most probable it is that their maintenance arises from the aurelia of the Lepidoptera 

 ordo, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the wilderness." 



" That some guess may be formed of the possible extent of good or evil occasioned by small 

 tiirds," says Bishop Stanley, " we annex the result of our own observations on the precise quantity of 

 food consumed by certain species, either for their own support or that of their young, remarking at 

 the same time that the difference observed in the instances may be partly accounted for by the 

 different quantity of food required by young birds at different periods of their growth. 



" Sparrows feed their young thirty-six times in an hour, which, calculating at the rate of fourteen 

 hours a day, in the long days of spring and summer, gives 3,500 times per week, a number corro- 

 borated on the authority of another writer, who calculated the number of caterpillars destroyed in a 

 week to be about 3,400. 



" Redstarts were observed to feed their young with little green grubs from gooseberry-trees 

 twenty-three times in an hour, which, at the same calculation, amounts to 2,254 times in a week, but 

 more grubs than one were usually imported each time. 



" Chaffinches at the rate of about thirty-five times an hour for five or six times together, when 



