in just the same way. It is marvellous what slender little twigs this bird will perch on, without their giving way beneath his round burly form. Sometimes they do give way, and then he swings about on them like a ball at the end of a piece of string, nor does he get off on to another one without a good deal of turmoil, and some climbing, which cannot be called quite fairy-like. In fact, he is awkward—but in the most graceful manner imaginable. Harpagon, as we know, "avait grace a tousser," and when a bird like the bullfinch condescends, for a moment, to be awkward, his charm is merely enhanced. Yet I cannot call him deft in the procurement of buds, as the blue-tit is, with whom he comes into competition, and whom he will drive away. He does not hang nibbling at them head downwards, as though to the manner born, and then swing up again on a twig-trapeze. These things, if not beyond him, are, at least, alien to his disposition, which is straightforward, and to his deportment, which has a certain sobriety. His plan, therefore, is to advance along the twig as far as it seems to him advisable to go, and then, stretching forward and elongating his neck, take a sharp bite at the bud, which, with his powerful bill, secures it at once—unless he fails. In the same way, he will stretch out from the twig he is on, to secure the bud on another, but this he does still more cautiously. At the blue-tit, when feeding on the same tree, he will sometimes make little dashes, driving him away. He has, in fact, just done so (only in this instance it was the hen bird) three times in succession. And now a fourth time has this hen bullfinch made a dash at the blue-tit. The tit, each time, flutters away easily, and without
