196 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



" But now behold the greatest of this train 

 Of miracles, stupendously minute; 

 The numerous progeny, claimant for food 

 Supplied by two small bills, and feeble wings 

 Of narrow range; supplied ay, duly fed 

 Fed in the dark, and yet not one forgot!" 



Nearly two hundred years ago Nicholas Cox author of a very 

 pleasant and readable treatise on singing birds wrote as follows 

 under similar impressions : " This Bird, in my opinion, is a pretty, 

 sweet dapper Songster, being of a nature cheerful; as he is pleasant 

 to the Ear, so he is to the Eye; and when he sings cocks up his 

 Tail, and throws out his Notes with so much alacrity and pleasure 

 that I know not any bird of its bigness more delights the sense 

 of Hearing. 



" This bird builds twice a year, about the latter end of April, in 

 shrubs where Ivy grows thick, and sometimes in old Hovels and 

 Barns. They lay a numerous quantity of Eggs, and 1 can assure 

 you I have seen a Nest containing two and twenty: herein are two 

 things greatly to be wondered at first, that so small a bird should 

 cover such a great quantity of eggs; secondly, when they have 

 hatched, to feed them all and not to miss one bird, and in the dark 

 also." 



In all my ornithological rambles, I have seldom encountered 

 more inviting wren-nooks than are to be found in some parts of 

 Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, where the glens are of sufficient depth 

 and slope to show off to advantage the gushing burn, as it hurries 

 over its rocky bed in a series of waterfalls, or sleeps in summer 

 silence under the green shade of its moss and birch-covered banks. 

 Wilson, during a hard life of mechanical toil, often soothed him- 

 self by strolling into such places, where doubtless much of the 

 vivid power of description, which he afterwards displayed in his 

 great work on the Birds of America, was fostered. In the 

 rambles of his leisure hours, it is believed, he wandered into the 

 glen above Lochwinnoch, and also to the verdant banks of Glen- 

 garnock a view of which I have much pleasure in introducing 

 here through the kind permission of John Knox, Esq., for whom 

 the original picture was painted by Mr C. N. Woolnoth, W.S.A. 

 Here is a likely place to give birth to such a poem as that of 

 Wilson's on the " Disconsolate Wren," the first stanza of which 

 admirably expresses its very features : 



