OF SELBORNE 107 



aurelia 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 

 aurelias of the genus of Phryganeie, etc. 



Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard 

 weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweep- 

 ings : and in mild weather they procure worms, which 

 are stirring every month in 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. Red-breasts and 

 wrens in the winter haunt out-houses, stables, and barns, 

 where they find spiders and flies that have laid them- 

 selves up during the cold season. But the grand support 

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

 of aurelise of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to 

 the twigs of trees and their trunks ; to the pales and 

 walls of gardens and buildings ; and is found in every 

 cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the 

 ground itself. 



Every species of titmouse winters with us ; they have 

 what I call a kind of intermediate bill between the hard 

 and the soft, between the Linnaean 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 deUcate long-tailed titmouse, which is almost 

 as minute as the golden-crowned wren : but the blue tit- 

 mouse, or nun {parus czruleus), the cole-mouse (parus 

 ater), the great black-headed titmouse (jringillago), and 

 the marsh titmouse (parus palustris), all resort, at times, 

 to buildings ; and in hard weather particularly. The 

 great titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much fre- 

 quents 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 straw lengthwise from out 



