6 4 



OUR "JENNY WRENr 



He quits in hollowed wall his bower, 



And through the winter's gloomy hour 



Sings cheerily ; nor yet hath lost 



His blitheness, chilled by pinching frost, 



Nor yet is forced for warmth to cleave 



To caverned nook or straw-built cave, 



Sing, gentle bird ! sing on, designed 



A lesson for our anxious kind, 



That we, like thee, with hearts content" 



The wren here referred to is a British species, the com- 

 mon wren, or Troglodytes vulgaris, one of the smallest of 

 our British songsters ; a restless, lively bird, which twitters 

 about the hedgerows in summer, and about the garden and 

 shrubbery in winter, and chanting his mellow song even 

 under the gloomy sky of December. Allied to this familiar 

 bird is the Gold-crowned Knight,* or Sylvia regulus^ which is 

 found in the Alpine deserts at an elevation of 9000 to 

 10,000 feet. Like our own Jenny Wren, he has a very 



fine, slender bill, which 

 denotes his insectivorous 

 propensities. He is easily 

 known by the little crest 

 of silky feathers which he 

 wears on his head, like a 

 diadem, and also by his 

 peculiar cry of soud-i-l-i. 

 Our crowned knight is 



FIG. i 3 .-The Wren. vef y p art i a l to t h e society 



of the tits, and, like them, he is easily caught with bird- 



Also called the Golden-crested Wren. 



