WREN. 735 



able for its boldness of tone, the fulness of joy which pervades 

 it, and the frequency of its rejDetition. One cannot hclj) re- 

 marking how the woods ring to their incessant roundelays, as 

 they hop on the ground, thread the old hedgerow^, fly from 

 brake to brake, aye or frisk about the topmost boughs of trees 

 which are forty feet in height. After the middle of October 

 they gradually leave off singing, and by the beginning of No- 

 vember have entirely ceased. From that time to the l7th of 

 February, this year, I heard only one individual sing. It was 

 on a bright sunny forenoon on the 30th of December. When 

 they recommence singing for the season, it is in a very low 

 key, when the weather happens to be mild, and the same is 

 the case at the time when they are about giving it up. During 

 the season of pairing the males engage in sharp contests, striv- 

 ing to outsing each other. The eggs are usually about eight. 

 I have several times seen ten or twelve, and I once found in a 

 young spruce tree a nest which contained the astonishing 

 number of fifteen. Two broods are sometimes reared in the 

 season." 



" I was not aware," says Mr Weir, " it had been taken 

 notice of by any naturalist, that the European Wren, or at 

 least some of this species, take possession of their nests as 

 places of repose during the severity of winter, until I lately 

 perused a very interesting account of the habits of these little 

 birds by Neville Wood, Esq., who says, ' Whether the nests 

 in which one or two broods had been reared in the summer are 

 tenanted every night throughout the winter by the old or the 

 young birds, is a question more curious than easy to determine, 

 on account of the difficulty, almost amounting to impractica- 

 bility, of catching the birds at night. This I have repeatedly 

 endeavoured to effect with a view of settling the point, but 

 without success.' I am happy to say that after much trouble, 

 I have so far succeeded in determining this curious question. 

 About nine o'clock of the evening of the 7th of JNIarch, in one 

 of their nests, which was built in a hole in an old wall, I 

 caught the male and female, and three of the brood, the other 

 four young birds which were also in the nest, made their escape. 

 They were the wrens I mentioned formerly as having during 



