The natural history of Selborne . mild wintersnight. Redbreasts and wrens in the winter hauntouthouses, stables, and barns, where they findspiders and flies that have laid themselves up du-ring the cold season. But the grand support of thesoft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusionof aurelise of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastenedto the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the palesand walls of gardens and buildings ; and is found ? See Derhams Physico-Theology, p, 134 NATURAL HISTORY in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, andeven in the ground itself. Every species
The natural history of Selborne . mild wintersnight. Redbreasts and wrens in the winter hauntouthouses, stables, and barns, where they findspiders and flies that have laid themselves up du-ring the cold season. But the grand support of thesoft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusionof aurelise of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastenedto the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the palesand walls of gardens and buildings ; and is found ? See Derhams Physico-Theology, p, 134 NATURAL HISTORY in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, andeven in the ground itself. Every species of titmouse winters with us ; theyhave what I call a kind of intermediate bill-betweenthe hard and the soft, between the Linnajan generaof frangilla and motacilla. One species alonespends its whole time in the woods and fields, neverretreating for succour in the severest seasons tohouses and neighbourhoods, and that is the delicatelong-tailed titmouse, which is almost as minute asthe golden-crowned wren ; but the Blue Titmouse,. or nun (parus ccBruleus), the colemouse {parus ater),the great black-headed titmouse {fringillago), andthe marsh titmouse {parus palustris), all resort, attimes, to buildings, and in hard weather great titmouse, driven by stress of weather,much frequents houses, and in deep snows I haveseen this bird, while it hung with its back downward(to my no small delight and admiration), draw strawslengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses,in order to pull out the flies that were concealed OF SELBORNE. 135 between them, and that in such numbers that theyquite defaced the thatch, and gave it a ragged ap-pearance. The blue titmouse, or nun, is a great frequent,er of houses, and a general devourer. Besides in-sects, it is very fond of flesh, for it frequently picksbones on dunghills ; it is a vast admirer of suet, andhaunts butchers shops. When a boy, I have l<no\vntwenty in a morning caught with snap mousetrapsbaited with tallow or suet. I
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