In respect to usefulness and activity, this bird takes the foremost place among the Tits: restless, noisy, and always cheerful from morning to night. It clings to the end of the twigs, head downwards, to look for insects underneath the buds; it even climbs up walls if they are rough and uneven. It slips into holes and crevices which seem impossible of entry. It pursues insects everywhere, and swallows them wholesale, as though it could never be satisfied. It has no fear of men, but comes confidently under the roof and perches on the gate, or looks in at the window from the window sill. It is courageous, even bold, and boundlessly inquisitive, a trait which often places its life and liberty in peril. For the sake of a little fat it will allow itself to be snared in a gourd or other trap. But it is just these qualities that make it so popular. Its voice sounds like “_tzit_” or “_sitzida, sitzida_.” This beautiful, kindly bird deserves every protection. * * * * * Our sympathies are quite with this bright active creature, although some of our English naturalists accuse it of using its strong beak in order to split the skull of small weakly birds so as to feast on their brains. It has even been known to treat a Bat in this manner. We recognise it readily in the early spring by its note which is like the noise caused by the sharpening of a saw with a file. Two years ago I saw the largest company of Tits--Great Tits, Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Marsh Tits and Crested [Illustration: USEFUL. THE GREAT TITMOUSE.] Tits--together with a great number of tiny and beautiful gold-crested Wrens, that I have ever seen, or indeed can ever hope to see again. It was in a pine forest about twenty miles north of Gotha, the property of Hans Freiherr von Berlepsch, Germany’s most ardent bird protector. He was with us at the time and he said even he had never seen the like before, nor had his chief gamekeeper, who is himself an ornithologist. It was the more wonderful because we had walked for nearly three hours through the woods that morning and had seen, with this great exception, little wild life beyond an occasional black Squirrel and, through an avenue of pines from afar, a grand Buck feeding in a clearing. It was in the late autumn.