says Bishop Mant. But it is seldom that one can get a good sight of its beautifully marked and mottled dress, for it is, like the Woodpecker, a shy and retiring bird; like that, too, it lays its eggs in a hole of a tree, lined with the decayed wood; they are six or seven in number generally, sometimes nine, and even ten, have been found in one hole; the colour is a pure white, or slightly tinged and spotted with yellowish brown. The time of incubation is fourteen days, and the female is so much attached to the young birds, that she will often suffer herself to be taken rather than desert them. These birds resort to the same spot year after year; it is at various heights from the ground, and sometimes the deserted nest of a Woodpecker or other bird is used. NUTHATCH. NUT-JOBBER. WOODCRACKER. FIGURE 13. The _Sittine_ Birds, or Nuthatches, are little short-bodied creatures, with large heads, and very small tails; the bill is tolerably long, straight, and slender, pentagonal, or five-sided at the base, or part where it is inserted into the head. They are pretty lively birds, and seem to occupy a position between the _Certhias_, or Tree Creepers, and the _Parine_ Birds or Tits. We have but one species in this country, known as the _Sitta EuropÊa_, or European Nuthatch; the generic name being derived, as Morris thinks, from some word in a primitive, or early language, (from _primus_--first,) from which also comes the term hatchet, and having reference to the habit of hacking and hewing at the nuts, on which this bird chiefly feeds. The Nuthatch is not found generally throughout Britain, only in certain localities, and very rarely in the northern parts. It has long curved claws, by means of which it ascends the trunks of the trees, and clings about the branches much like the Creepers and Woodpeckers, frequently descending head downwards, which few other birds are able to do. It bores into the nuts with its strong-pointed bill, and feeds upon the kernels; it also with the same instrument extracts the insects from the holes and crevices, and thus varies its diet. Its motions are abrupt and jerking, so that it always appears in a desperate hurry, and it keeps up a constant _quit, quit_, as though giving warning to its landlady of an intention to leave its lodgings forthwith. Bewick says that it will pick bones, and that it lays up a store of food for the winter in various little granaries. For a nesting-place it makes choice of some hole in a tree, which it lines with dried leaves, moss, scales of fir-cones, bits of bark, and it may be, a little hair. If the entrance is too large it is partly closed up with clay, so as to leave but just room for the bird to enter. The eggs are from five to seven or eight, sometimes nine in number; they are greyish white, with spots or blotches of reddish brown.