PINE-FOEESTS. 65 



bird to wear away or even break the tip of its bill in tlie course 

 of its indefatigable efforts to obtain food, and I have seen a 

 specimen in the Bern Museum whose broken bill may possibly 

 be a confirmation of this explanation. The peasant mind is apt 

 enough to elevate an accidental circumstance into a law of 

 nature. 



We must now leave region No. 3 altogether, and descend from 

 the Engstlen-alp westwards towards the Hasli-thal, passing 

 through long stretches of the pine-forests which so often separate 

 the upper pastures from the valleys. There are two families of 

 birds to be met with in these forests, of which I must say a very 

 few words,— the Woodpeckers and the Titmice. The former are 

 not abundant, and it needs much patience to find them. I was 

 to have visited a nesting-place of the Great Black Woodpecker 

 (that awe-inspiring bird, which has borne its name of Picus 

 Martins ever since it was the prophetic bird of Mars), but fate 

 decreed that I should have to go that day in an opposite 

 direction. The three Spotted Woodpeckers — great, middle, and 

 lesser — all occur, but our familiar green bird, which does not 

 seem at home among the pines, is less common. Earest of 

 all is the Three-toed Woodpecker, with yellow head, which 

 dwells — so Anderegg told me, and I find from the books that he 

 was right — only among the highest and most solitary pine- 

 woods. 



At intervals, as in an English wood, the trees will be 

 astir with Titmice. The Cole-tit and the Marsh-tit, the 

 Blue-tit and the Great- tit, are all to be seen here, the last 

 two undistinguishable from the British form, whUe the Cole-tit 



