110 BIRDS AND MAN 



the song of the wood wren ? I know two or three 

 persons who are as fond of the bird as I am ; and 

 two or three recent writers on bird Kfe have spoken 

 of its song as if they loved it. The ornithologists 

 have in most cases been satisfied to quote Gilbert 

 White's description of Letter XIX. : " This last 

 haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, 

 and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise now 

 and then, at short intervals, shaking a little with 

 its wings when it sings." 



White was a little more appreciative in the case 

 of the willow wren when he spoke of its " joyous, 

 easy, laughing note " ; yet the willow wren has 

 had to wait a long time to be recognised as one of 

 our best vocalists. Some years ago it was greatly 

 praised by John Burroughs, who came over from 

 America to hear the British songsters, his thoughts 

 running chiefly on the nightingale, blackcap, 

 throstle, and blackbird ; and he was astonished 

 to find that this unfamed warbler, about which 

 the ornithologists had said little and the poets 

 nothing, was one of the most delightful vocalists, 

 and had a " delicious warble." He waxed in- 

 dignant at our neglect of such a singer, and cried 

 out that it had too fine a song to please the British 

 ear : that a louder coarser voice was needed to 



