The following is another instance, hardly less remarkable, though having reference to an altogether different kind of bird. The particular incident is well known to naturalists, and perhaps the latest rendering of it is that by the Nestor of British ornithology, Professor Newton. He says: "When the blue titmouse has taken possession of a hole, she is not easily induced to quit it, but defends her nest and eggs with great courage and pertinacity, puffing out her feathers, hissing like a snake, and trying to repel the fingers of the intruder.... The branch containing the nest may even be sawn off and conveyed to a distance (a cruel experiment) without the mother leaving it, and cases have been known in which, when this has been done, she has still continued to sit on her eggs, hatch them, and rear her brood. With equal persistence will this species year after year use as a nursery the same hole, and a remarkable instance of this kind is on record. In 1779, according to one account, in 1785, according to another, it is said that a pair of these birds built their nest in a large earthenware bottle which had been left to drain in the branches of a tree in a garden at Oxbridge, in the township of Hartburn, near Stockton-on-Tees, and safely hatched their young. The bottle having been allowed to remain in the same position by the occupiers of the farm, then and still a family of the name of Callendar, was frequented for the same purpose and with a like result, until 1822, when, the tree becoming decayed, the bottle was placed in one near by, and the tenancy continued until 1851. In that year the occupiers of the farm omitted drawing out the old nest, as had been the constant practice before the breeding season, and in consequence the birds chose another place; but in 1852 they returned to the bottle, and have annually built in it, or in a second bottle, which has lately been placed close by it, up to the present year, 1873, with the exception of one season, when a pair of great titmice took possession of their inheritance. The intruders were shot, and the tenancy, it is hoped, will not be again disturbed."