its criminality. Yet for this venial indulgence do we proscribe it, rank it with vermin, and set a price upon its head, giving four-pence for the dozen, probably the ancient payment when the groat was a coin. However powerful the stimulus was then, we yet find it a sufficient inducement to our idle bat-fowling boys to bring baskets of poor toms’ heads to our church-warden’s door. The wiles and stratagems of every creature are deserving of attention, because they are, for the most part, the impulse of the weak and feeble, instinctive efforts to preserve their own existence, or more generally to secure or defend that of their offspring. Few are able to effect these objects by bodily power; but all creatures probably exert a faculty of some kind, to ward off injury from their young, though not observed by, or manifested to us. This poor little blue tom-tit, which has neither beak, claws, nor any portion of strength to defend itself from the weakest assailant, will nevertheless make trial by menace to scare the intruder from its nest. It builds almost universally in the hole of a wall, or a tree; and its size enables it to creep through so small a crevice, that it is pretty well secured from all annoyances, but those of bird-nesting boys; and these little plunderers the sitting bird endeavors to scare away, by hissing and puffing in a very extraordinary manner from the bottom of the hole, as soon as a finger is introduced, and so perfectly unlike the usual voice of a bird, that many a young intruder is deterred from prosecuting any farther search, lest he should rouse the vengeance of some lurking snake or adder. They who have seen much of birds, and attended to their actions, will in general be certain of the creature that flits past, by the manner of its flight; or that utters its note unseen by the peculiarity of voice; but the tribe of titmice[47] (parus), especially in the spring of the year, emit such a variety of sounds, that they will occasionally surprise and disappoint us. Hearing an unusual voice, and creeping with caution to observe the stranger from which it proceeds, we perceive only our old acquaintance, the large tom-tit (parus major), searching for food amid the lichens on the bough of an apple-tree. This bird, and that little dark species the “coal,” or “colemouse” (parus ater), in particular, will often acquire or compound a note, become delighted with it, and repeat it incessantly while sporting about the catkins of the alder, for an hour or so, then seem to forget or be weary of it, and we hear it no more.