736 
BIRD-LIFE. 
representative of this handsome family; and as the 
description of one member will serve for almost the whole 
family, my selection will be sufficient.* 
Titmice are active, joyous, impudent, courageous, and 
exceptionally restless birds. They are all exceedingly 
intelligent, but their curiosity and violent disposition 
often leads to their capture, and proves dangerous to 
their welfare. Their good and bad qualities are equal; 
for, in spite of their sociability, they are quarrelsome, 
impetuous, and thievish. This, however, must not trouble 
us; man must take these birds as he finds them, and 
recognize their immeasurable utility before he can appre¬ 
ciate them at their true value, when he will learn to like 
them despite their tricks, if he examines their habits with 
the care and liberality of feeling befitting a true observer 
of Nature. Titmice are, to my mind, most charming 
little creatures, who understand how to enliven the 
weary-hearted spectator in a thousand different ways. 
Their life is a merry one, and no mistake : a troop of Tits 
traverses its beat,—climbing, hopping, flying and spring¬ 
ing, scolding and quarrelling, singing, and playing every 
conceivable antic; always doing something, and often 
engaged in some utterly useless employment. 
All Tits are, at the same time, artists, yet bunglers. 
They are no songsters, and yet they sing the livelong- 
day,—summer, winter, spring, and autumn; they are not 
* But few ornithologists of the present clay, we believe, look on this species as 
being a true Titmouse, and Koch’s view of the matter—in separating it gen eric ally 
from the Paridoe, and placing it in a genus by itself, under the title of Panunis —has 
been very generally accepted. We cannot do better than to refer our readers to 
the interesting chapter on this bird in Prof. Newton’s edition of Yarrell’s ‘British 
Birds.’ The observations contained in the six paragraphs which follow relate to 
the Paridoe in general, exclusive of Panurus biannicus, but are in no way applicable 
to that species.— IV. J. 
