A NOVEL CHRISTMAS TREE. 
223 
window stands a pot, in which is a small spruce fir between four 
and five feet high. This fir is ornamented with all kinds of 
dainties calculated to win the hearts of the feathered tribe — a 
coco-nut sawn in two and pierced with holes to enable us to 
wire the halves firmly on to the tree, brazil nuts cracked and 
half peeled, lumps of suet and dried figs: and twice a day a 
miscellaneous meal of scraps is strewn on the ground beneath 
the tree. To this feast of good things come various guests. 
The great tits — of which we have at least two pairs — are hardly 
ever absent from the tree for more than a couple of minutes 
together. A pair of marsh-tits are constant visitors, and are 
second in beauty to none, with their black satin caps, pulled 
down well over their eyes, and their rusty-grey waistcoats. The 
nuthatches come two and three at a time. The tom-tits and 
cole-tits are numerous, and there is always a crowd of better- 
known birds pecking at the scraps on the ground. Here come 
the greedy blackbirds, and in the presence of so much in which 
their souls delight, the “ rollicking tenors of the shrubberies ” 
become mere pugnacious gluttons, chasing one another round 
and away from the much-prized morsels — which are mean- 
while snatched up wholesale by the harmful, unnecessary, and 
always vulgar sparrows, who arrive in flocks, like ghouls, at the 
mere hint of a meal. The thrushes — both the common kind and 
their somewhat overbearing relations, the storm-cocks — hop in 
suddenly amongst the crowd, pounce on a morsel, and are off 
with it at once. One thrush — with a curious crest of white 
feathers — has been a pensioner of ours for nearly five years now. 
Occasionally a small troop of dull, heavy greenfinches, on 
their way along the edge of the terrace upon which the ash 
from the field below casts its seeds, will turn aside for a moment 
to see what is exciting the other birds. And sometimes one, 
more adventurous than his fellows, will so far come out of his 
groove as to make the experiment of this new kind of food. 
But, like the true rustic he is, new tastes displease him, 
and he plods back to join the troop who are bumping heavily 
along on their short legs at the edge of the terrace, pecking up 
the ash seeds and cutting off the husky brown wings with a 
dexterous twist of their strong beaks, which gives them for the 
moment a faint resemblance to cross-bills, so completely do the 
mandibles overlap. Surel}'^ the greenfinch is the Hodge of the 
feathered creation — heavy in his movements, clumsy and dull, ' 
absolutely contented with his narrow groove, and looking upon 
anything novel with alarm. For the six years this rectory has 
been my home have the greenfinches come in troops in January 
and February, and generally in the afternoons, to the west 
corner of the terrace, just above the big ash-tree in the field 
below, and lumped heavily along the edge of it, eating as they 
go in a business-like, unjoyful manner, to the east corner, when 
they take flight silently, or with one unmusical note, like the 
creak of a rusty wheel, to some more ash-trees in a far-off 
