. Cassell's book of birds . es 3,500 times per week, a number corro-borated on the authority of another writer, who calculated the number of caterpillars destroyed in aweek to be about 3,400. Redstarts were observed to feed their young with little green grubs from gooseberry-treestwenty-three times in an hour, which, at the same calculation, amounts to 2,254 times in a week, butmore grubs than one were usually imported each time. Chaffinches at the rate of about thirty-five times an hour for five or six times together, when THE SINGING BIRDS. 313 they would pause, and not return for intervals
. Cassell's book of birds . es 3,500 times per week, a number corro-borated on the authority of another writer, who calculated the number of caterpillars destroyed in aweek to be about 3,400. Redstarts were observed to feed their young with little green grubs from gooseberry-treestwenty-three times in an hour, which, at the same calculation, amounts to 2,254 times in a week, butmore grubs than one were usually imported each time. Chaffinches at the rate of about thirty-five times an hour for five or six times together, when THE SINGING BIRDS. 313 they would pause, and not return for intervals of eight or ten minutes; the food was greencaterpillars. • The Titmouse sixteen times in an hour. The comparative weight consumed was as follows :— A Greenfinch, provided with eighty grains by weight of wheat, in twenty-four hours consumedseventy-nine; but of a thick paste, made of flour, eggs, &c, it consumed upwards of one hundredgrains. A Goldfinch consumed about ninety grains of Canary seed in twenty four the great tit (Pants major). Sixteen Canaries consumed at the average rate of one hundred grains each in twenty-fourhours. The consumption of food by these birds, compared with the weight of their bodies, was aboutone-sixth ; which, supposing a man to consume food in the same proportion to his weight, wouldamount to about twenty-five pounds for every twenty-four hours. The nest, which is formed of moss and wool, lined with hair, is placed in a hole in a wall, orthe hollow of a tree, or sometimes on the ground, in cavities among the exposed roots, at the mouthof some burrow. The eggs are from six to eight in number, and are white, spotted with pale red. The BLUE TITS represent a group that have been separated from those mentioned above onaccount of the unusual shortness of their much-curveu beak and the peculiar coloration of their[il 11 mage. vol. 11.—79 34 CASSELLS BOOK OF BIRDS. THE BLUE TIT. The Blue Tit (Pari/s caruleus) is bluish green on the back, and b
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