OCTOBER, 1881. 79 



jaded Southerner, and must have thrust itself with per- 

 sistent determination among visions of gay dresses in 

 many a brilliant ball-room, when the tired eyelids fell 

 upon tired eyes, and wholesome thoughts thrust them- 

 selves thrust themselves that bunch in the hedge is 

 never natural ! It has thrust itself so persistently upon 

 our mind, that we are forced to withdraw our eyes even 

 from the heaven-tending hills, and examine it more 

 minutely. The hedge has been getting bare these latter 

 days, and so has rendered this knot somewhat more 

 apparent, otherwise it would not have been noted even 

 by our practised eyes ; for it belongs to a little builder 

 that is as dexterous in its choice of a locality as it is 

 skilful in the use it makes of it. Here is this low hedge, 

 not three feet high at the most, crushing into the road, 

 for there is no footpath, and threadbare at the best, even 

 when in its fresh toggery. Yet where our coat must 

 have brushed against its encircling twigs, and the stamp 

 of our passing foot have shaken the youngsters in their 

 snug retreat, a common wren had built its nest, with the 

 moss thoroughly interwoven amid encircling twigs of 

 thorn. Even a ringer can scarcely be inserted, but the 

 little troglodytes had been gliding in a^id out amid the 

 thorns, and yet evading the eyes of the schoolboys and 

 the passing wayfarers until its snuggery was completed in 

 a most workmanlike fashion. There is no doubt that a wren 

 can secure a dwelling-place from ordinary human obser- 

 vation in a manner such as no other bird can pretend to, 

 and we have found half-a-dozen of their nests in the 

 thinned hedge, 50 yards long, in which our most careful 

 and by no means unskilful scrutiny could not make sure 

 of one, when the mother's heart was panting and 

 " summer was green." 



