152 THE NESTS AND EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS. 



performed chiefly by the female, lasts thirteen or fourteen 

 days. 



Diagnostic characters : It is impossible to give 

 any reliable characters that will enable the student to 

 distinguish the eggs of the Wren from those of the 

 Willow Wren, Great Titmouse, Nuthatch, and similar 

 species. The form and character of the nest is the most 

 unfailing guide to their correct identification. 



Family TROGLODYTID.E. Genus Troglodytes. 



ST. K I L D A WREN. 



Troglodytes parvulus hirtensis, Scebohm. 

 Probably Double Brooded. Laying season, April to June. 



British breeding area : Notwithstanding Mr. 

 Dresser's contention to the contrary, I stoutly maintain 

 the sub-specific distinctness of the present bird from the 

 Common Wren. Naturalists belonging to the older 

 school of philosophy, burdened and biased as they are 

 by all the prx-Darvvinian ideas on local variation and 

 sub-specific characters (which amount practically to a 

 complete ignoring of them), cannot be expected to 

 change their opinions, or to train their warped and 

 defective powers of vision and perception to a correct 

 focus of those facts which Nature unquestionably 

 presents to us in bewildering plenitude ; but one would 

 have thought that the man who wds a party to the 

 separation of Parus britannicus from Pariis ater more 

 than twenty years ago, would by this time have had 

 sufficient experience of sub-specific forms not quite so 

 rashly or inconsistently to ignore them. Troglodytes 



