96 A GARDEN DIARY 
of reckoning; while as for the birds and beasts, 
they are much more disposed to turn to us for 
help, than to make any friendly propositions the 
other way. 
It may be mere vanity upon my part, but it 
always seems to me that small birds recognise 
their heavy, wingless, two-legged kinsfolk with 
less difficulty during this sort of weather than at 
any other time of the year. The fact that one 
bribes them to such recognition by vulgar doles 
of breadcrumbs may have something to say to 
the matter, but I fancy that I read a distinctly 
kindlier expression in their eyes. They glance 
at us with an air of comparative condescension. 
They perceive that we share their own help- 
lessness ; that we are not so very different from 
themselves, only bigger and stupider. For in- 
stance, I have been publicly snubbed this whole 
winter by the tomtits. Under the eye and to the 
knowledge of the entire garden I set up a large 
post, hung over with cocoa-nuts for their con- 
venience. Some of these cocoa-nuts were sawn 
into slices, others, more artfully, into rings, and 
I pleased myself by believing that they would sit 
and swing in them, as they pecked an unfamiliar, 
but not unpalatable meal. Will it be believed 
that not one tomtit has deigned to touch those 
cocoa-nuts? They have hopped to and fro on 
the boughs almost within peck of them, yet never 
so much as tried to ascertain whether they were 
