We still continue here that very ancient custom of giving parish rewards for the destruction of various creatures included in the denomination of vermin. In former times it may have been found necessary to keep under or reduce the numbers of many predaceous animals, which in a thickly wooded country, with an inferior population, might have been productive of injury; and we even find parliamentary statutes enacted for this purpose: but now, however, our losses by such means have become a very petty grievance; our gamekeepers do their part in removing pests of this nature, and the plow and the ax leave little harbor for the few that escape; and thus we war on the smaller races of creation, and call them vermin. An item passed in one of our late church-wardens’ accounts was, “for seventeen dozen of tom-tits’ heads!” In what evil hour, and for what crime, this poor little bird (parus cæruleus) could have incurred the anathema of a parish, it is difficult to conjecture. I know hardly any small animal that lives a more precarious life than the little blue tom-tit. Indeed it is marvellous how any of the insectivorous birds, that pass their winter with us, are supplied with food during inclement seasons, unless they have greater powers of abstinence than we are aware of: but our small birds are generally much more active than those of a larger bulk; the common wren is all animation, its actions and movements bespeak hilarity and animal spirits; and that minute creature, too, the golden-crested wren, is always in motion, flitting from the yew hedge to the fir, or darting away to taller trees with a spring and a power we could not expect from its size. These muscular exertions must greatly counteract the effects of seasons, and enable these atoms of animals to support so cheerfully and gaily the winters of our climate. But in truth this tom-tit perishes in severe winters in great numbers. It roosts under the eaves of our haystacks, and in little holes of the mows, where we often find it dead, perished by cold or hunger, or conjointly by both; yet the race survives, and this annual waste is recruited by the prolificacy of the creature, the nest of which will frequently contain from seven to nine young ones. Its chief subsistence is insects, which it hunts out with unwearied perseverance. It peeps into the nail-holes of our walls, which, though closed by the cobweb, will not secrete the spider within; and draws out the chrysalis of the cabbage butterfly from the chinks in the barn: but a supply of such food is precarious, and becomes exhausted. It then resorts to our yards, and picks diminutive morsels from some rejected bone, or scraps from the butcher’s stall: yet this is the result of necessity, not choice; for no sooner is other food attainable, than it retires to its woods and thickets. In summer it certainly will regale itself with our garden pease, and shells a pod of marrowfats with great dexterity; but this, we believe, is the extent of