4 By Leafy Ways. 



eaves of an ancient barn, it is a delicate fabric of dry 

 grass, harmonizing exactly with the stained and 

 weathered thatch. Now, in a chink in the crumbling 

 ruin, its grays and browns are in perfect keeping with 

 the tints of the time-worn masonry. Now, cradled in 

 the arms of the giant ivy, it seems but the handful of 

 dry leaves that the winds of autumn heaped into the 

 hollow. Many a time would it escape notice alto- 

 gether, did not the alarm notes of the builder, like a 

 miniature watchman's rattle, as she flits uneasily in and 

 out of the hedgerow, betray what she fain would hide. 



Birds in general are jealous of any meddling with 

 their nests ; but the wren is particularly fastidious ; 

 and should her sanctuary be touched in her absence 

 she will detect the profanation in a moment, and will 

 probably abandon her eggs without further ceremony. 



The wren lays eight eggs, and frequently rears a 

 second brood in the season. If all the young sur- 

 vived, there would be at the end of ten years no fewer 

 than two thousand millions of descendants to a single 

 pair. What ghastly tables of mortality the annals of 

 the race would furnish ! 



The ivy-crowned ruin of the long dismantled mill 

 whose memory goes back to the days of the old Nor- 

 man survey is the haunt of many a shy feathered 

 builder. In their favourite nook, draped with dark 

 trailing moss, glittering with drops from water that 

 still plashes down where water fell a thousand years 

 ago, a pair of dainty wagtails make their nest year 



