We might naturally suppose that by the end of winter, all those little birds which are solely supported by insect food would find some difficulty in providing for their wants, having consumed by their numbers and exertions nearly all that store of provision which had been provided in the summer and deposited in safety; but I have found the stomachs of the tree-creeper, and this small titmouse, even in February, quite filled with parts of coleopterous creatures, which by their activity and perseverance they had been enabled to procure beneath the mosses on the branches, and from the chinks in the bark of trees, where they had retired in autumn. Such plenty being procurable after the supply of so many months, renders it apparent that there is no actual deficiency of food at any one period of the year. The small slugs, and some few insects, may perhaps be consumed by the severity of winter, but the larger portion of them are so constituted, as to derive no injury from the inclemency of that season, but afford during many months provender to other creatures, multitudes yet remaining to continue their races and animate the air, when the warm days of spring shall waken them to active life. The construction and selected situations of the nests of birds are as remarkable, as the variety of materials employed in them; the same forms, places, and articles, being rarely, perhaps never, found united by the different species, which we should suppose similar necessities would direct to a uniform provision. Birds that build early in the spring seem to require warmth and shelter for their young, and the blackbird and the thrush line their nests with a plaster of loam, perfectly excluding, by these cottage-like walls, the keen icy gales of our opening year; yet should accident bereave the parents of their first hopes, they will construct another, even when summer is far advanced, upon the model of their first erection, and with the same precautions against severe weather, when all necessity for such provision has ceased, and the usual temperature of the season rather requiring coolness and a free circulation of air. The house-sparrow will commonly build four or five times in the year, and in a variety of situations, under the warm eaves of our houses and our sheds, the branch of the clustered fir, or the thick tall hedge that bounds our garden, &c.; in all which places, and without the least consideration of site or season, it will collect a great mass of straws and hay, and gather a profusion of feathers from the poultry-yard to line its nest. This cradle for its young, whether under our tiles in March or in July, when the parent bird is panting in the common heat of the atmosphere, has the same provision made to afford warmth to the brood; yet this is a bird that is little affected by any of the extremes of our climate. The wood-pigeon and the jay, though they erect their fabrics on the tall underwood in the open