338 WINTER WREN. 



feathers and breast, dirty white, with minute transverse touches 

 of a drab or clay colour; sides under the wings speckled with 

 dark brown, black, and dirty white; belly and vent thickly 

 mottled with sooty black, deep brown, and pure white, in trans- 

 verse touches; tail very short, consisting of twelve feathers, the 

 exterior one, on each side, a quarter of an inch shorter, the rest 

 lengthening gradually to the middle ones; legs and feet a light 

 clay colour, and pretty stout; bill straight, slender, half an inch 

 long, not notched at the point, of a dark brown or black above, 

 and whitish below; nostril oblong; eye light hazel. The female 

 wants the points of white on the wing coverts. The food of 

 this bird is derived from that great magazine of so many of the 

 feathered race, insects and their larvae, particularly such as 

 inhabit watery places, roots of bushes, and piles of old timber. 

 It were much to be wished that the summer residence, nest 

 and eggs, of this bird were precisely ascertained, which would 

 enable us to determine whether it be, what I strongly suspect 

 it is, the same species as the common domestic Wren of Britain. 



