304 Alexander Goodman More. [isss 



Kilda's, found Mr. Barrington remembered by all the 

 natives by his sobriquet of "the Wren-man/' 



Mr. Harrington's failure to procure a Wren at St. 

 Kilda's was of little ultimate consequence, at any rate, to 

 the poor bird itself. It was only a year later that Mr. 

 Charles Dixon obtained it, with results which are now but 

 too widely known. " A new species of Wren " Troglodytes 

 hirtensis believed to be quite peculiar to St. Kilda's, was 

 announced by Mr. Seebohm in the " Zoologist " for August, 

 1884. There was certainly some inaccuracy in the assertion 

 made not long after by Mr. Dixon, that " although 

 .this little Wren was known by Martin nearly 200 years 

 ago, neither he nor any subsequent naturalist had the least 

 idea that the bird was different from the Wren inhabiting" 

 the rest of the United Kingdom." Still Messrs. Seebohm 

 and Dixon were undeniably the first discoverers of the 

 actual fact of its distinctness whether specific or varietal 

 matters little now. And then came the denouement, most 

 briefly and simply told by Mr. W. H. Hudson, in a pamphlet 

 issued by the Society for the Protection of Birds. u No 

 sooner had the news gone abroad that ' lone St. Kilda's 

 isle' possessed one little song-bird of her own a Wren that 

 differed somewhat from the familiar Wren than it was 

 invaded by the noble army of collectors, who did not mind 

 its loneliness and distance from the mainland so long as 

 they secured something for their cabinets : and the result 

 of their invasion is that the St. Kilda Wren no longer 

 exists." 



It would perhaps have been too inappropriate had 

 " Hesperus " been implicated, however undesignedly, in 

 the death-warrant of St. Kilda's one peculiar bird. 



Meanwhile, much better in health than last year, he 

 could enjoy a little botanizing though without the con- 

 comitant of bird-hunting on his own score, and would 

 sometimes, at the end of the week, cross over to Holyhead 

 and spend a day scrambling on the slopes of its mountain, 

 looking after Helianthemum breweri, or exploring the 

 range of the "Cineraria." On the ist of July he had the 

 satisfaction of finding the latter plant in a number of 

 stations, and, as he told Mr. Babington, " fairly safe from 



