Another instance which I witnessed was in a nest containing young ones.  This was also at the root of a tree, but the situation did not appear to be so well chosen as is usually the case with the Titmouse tribe; for in this instance the hole went quite through the tree, and on one side was large enough to admit the hand.  As the young ones were exposed to the weather, and were also liable to be seen by anyone going along the adjoining footpath, I attempted to remedy this defect by covering the larger hole with a sod, which to a casual observer would appear to have grown there.  On taking the sod off one day, to see how the nestlings were going on, I perceived that a clod of earth had fallen from the sod upon them, and I took a stick and hooked it out, lest it should smother them.  Whilst I was doing this I perceived the old one sat on the further side of the nest, so still and quiet that until I perceived her eye I fancied she was dead; and she also endured several pokings with the stick before she would move, although the hole on the opposite side of the tree enabled her to escape whenever she thought proper.

Perhaps Mr. Rennie, in his next edition of Montagu’s Dictionary, will give us a new name for this bird, as the one it has at present is no more applicable to this species than it is to the Parus caeruleus, or the Parus major, and not half so much so as it would be to the Parus biarnicus; and he has changed good names into bad ones with far less reason, witness Corvus frugilegus into Corvus predatorius.  The former name is strictly applicable to that species, and to that alone; and so useful a bird does not deserve the name of a thief.  The Chaffinch (which received its name of Coelebs from Linnaeus on account of the males alone remaining in Sweden in the winter, which fact is corroborated by White, who found scarcely any but females in Hampshire during that season) has had its name changed by Mr. Rennie into Spiza.  The old name is characteristic of a remarkable fact in the habits of this bird; why the new one is more appropriate (neither understanding Greek, nor having read Aristotle), I cannot say.  Will Mr. Rennie condescend to enlighten me?

Once for all—­if we are to have a new nomenclature, let a committee of able naturalists decide upon it, or let us submit to the authority of a master (for instance Linnaeus or Temminck), but don’t let every bookmaker who publishes a work on Natural History, rejecting names long established and universally received, give new ones in such a way as serves only to show his own presumption and to confuse what it ought to be his business to elucidate.

* * * * *

CREEPER.

The Nuthatch does not occur in this, and I doubt if in any part of Lancashire, but the Creeper is very common, and is a bird with the habits and peculiar call of which I have been acquainted from my childhood.  Mr. Bree, who combines with accurate and extensive information, an amiable and pleasant manner of communicating it, has not, I perceive, witnessed the Creepers associating with the Titmice in winter, at which I am rather surprised, and think if they are numerous in his neighbourhood, he will hereafter not fail to perceive them among the small flocks of Titmice which associate through the winter.