THE TITS. 
I29 
hole in a tree or wall being selected, and, in the former 
instance, the entrance to the nest is plastered up by the birds, 
leaving only a small hole for ingress. The nest is scarcely 
worthy of the name, consisting only of a few grasses or dead 
leaves. The most remarkable nest of a Nuthatch is to be seen 
in the Natural History Museum, to which it was given by the 
late Mr. F. Bond as a natural curiosity. It is built in the side 
of a haystack, to which the birds had carried as much as 
eleven pounds’ weight of clay, and had thus constructed a solid 
nest in this apparently unfavourable position. 
Eggs. — Five to eight in number. Ground-colour pure white, 
thickly spotted with rufous, with underlying spots of grey. 
The rufous markings are generally large and bold, and often 
encircle the larger end of the egg, but in many clutches the 
markings consist of a sprinkling of rtd dots all over the egg, 
occasionally relieved by some larger spots of dark rufous. 
Axis, o‘7-o' 85 inch ; diam., o'5-o'6. 
THE TITS. FAMILY PARIDAS. 
The members of this family are generally distributed over 
the northern parts of the Old and New World, ranging as far 
south as Southern Mexico in America, and in the Old World 
all over Europe, Africa, and Asia, as far as the Indo-Malayan 
Islands. The Tits are remarkable for their powerful little 
conical bills, which are densely beset with feathers at the base, 
so as to entirely hide the nostrils. The tarsus is scutellated. 
The family may be roughly divided into True Tits, Crested 
I its, Long-tailed Tits, and Penduline Tits, all but the latter 
group being represented in England. The Reedlings ( Fanurus ) 
are also generally classed in this family, but have little to do 
with the other Paridce. By some recent writers, notably by 
Mr. Oates, the Tits have been placed in close proximity to the 
Crows. With these birds, in our humble opinion, they have 
little in common, beyond a certain carnivorous propensity. 
tiie true tits, genus parus. 
■Parus, Linn., Syst. Nat., i., p. 341 (1766). 
Type, P. major , Linn. 
bhe genus Parus includes not only the True Tits, such as 
