TITUS, TITA, AND BARABBAS.
[TO TEE EDITOR Or TER "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—May I cap your correspondent's tale of the Devonshire guider with a more recent example of a bird's virtues ? In a nesting-box in our garden a pair of blue tits, known to the children as Titus and Tita, have built their nest. Early yesterday morning we discovered that a cat had scrambled up the tree and had torn off the front of the little house, thus revealing the nest, which held eight tiny eggs in place of the eight plump little birdlings the prowling robber had hoped to devour. My wife picked up the fallen plank, with its little round door, and the perch which serves as doorstep, and with due care strove to restore it to its place: The anxious parents were hovering round her, and presently the tiny hen dashed right under my wife's nose, nearly upsetting her balance, and indignantly seated herself on her eggs. There she courageously sat while the nails were being hammered into the holes from which they were torn. When our task was done we retired. The male tit, who had been fluttering round us, swooped on to the perch, and putting his head through the little door, evidently satisfied himself that all was well. Then, with the most delightful chirrup of joy, he dashed off to get food for his bravo 'ittle partner. Our next step was to surround the trunk of the tree with a barbed-wire entanglement to prevent a second visit from Barabbas—the brigand. Perhaps we humans should be neutrals in the incessant war that birds and beasts wage on one another. But if we had caught Barabbas in the act, indignation would have mastered us. The cat might plead necessity, instinct, hunger. But aggression is aggression, and we humans have instincts also, not always, wisely repressed. That little tit's brave defence of her nest, does it not remind us, though we smile at the comparison, of the desperate gallantry of Belgium and Serbia in face of overwhelming odds ? Is it not natural to wish to help courage so surprising and so
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