THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 227 
In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and 
consistent. ‘There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field- 
mouse, and the bird called the nut-hatch, which live much 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 with his knife; the 
second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled 
with a wimble, and yet so small that one could wonder how 
the kernel can be extracted through it; while the last 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 perfo- 
rates the stubborn shell. 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 them. While at work they make a rapping noise 
that may be heard at a considerable distance. 
You that understand both the theory and practical part of 
music may best inform us why harmony or melody should so _ 
strangely assist some men, as it were by recollection, for days 
after the concert is over. What I mean the following passage 
will most readily explain : — 
“He preferred the harmony of birds to either the human voice or 
instrumental music; not that he did not take pleasure in any other; 
but because after human music something is left in the mind which | 
. Causes agitation and disturbs the attention and sleep, whilst the varied 
imitations of sound and harmony come and go in the imagination, 
whereas nothing of the sort can be produced by the modulations of 
birds, since, as they are not equally imitable by us, they cannot 
equally excite in us the internal faculty,” 
This curious quotation strikes me much by so well represent- 
ing my own case, and by describing what I have so often felt, 
