OF SELBORNE. 
267 
live mucli on hazel-nuts ; and yet they open them each in a 
different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits 
the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does w4th 
his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, as regular as 
if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one would won- 
der how the kernel can be extracted through it ; while the last 
THE HAWFINCH. 
picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill : but as this artist 
has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an 
adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in some cleft of 
• a tree, or in some crevice : when, standing over it, he perforates 
the stubborn shelh We have often placed nuts in the chink of 
a gate-post where nut-hatches have been known to haunt, and 
have always found that those birds have readily penetrated 
