11 NOVEMBER 1949, Page 18

Domestic Tits Tits, blue and great, have of late been

much in the news, owing to their development of pernicious habits. Here is a new example of the worst of the habits. The scene is the interior of the dome of Haileybury Chapel. On its reconstruction an inner dome was built below the original, and both were lined (for acoustic purposes) with asbestos below a light covering of stucco. Some weeks ago tits found their way into the chapel, and pecked at the roof in many places, leaving holes from which they have pulled out the asbestos which they shower on the pews below. The damage is reckoned at several hundred pounds. Have any other buildings been so attacked ? And is there any easy means of prevention ? The only parallel that I can quote is of a church in Brazil whore the service was frequently interrupted by humming birds who fell down through entangling themselves in spiders' webs in the roof 1 The cure in this case was to cut holes in the fool; and all was well.