46 NATURAL HISTORY. 



possess this wing are po \vei-ful migrants. The Titneliidce, on the other hand, with their feeble 

 rounded wings, in which the bastard primary of the true Thrush is replaced by a broad first quill, are 

 very poor fliers, and consequently, for the most part, stay-at-home or non-migratory birds. In this 

 large family will be found several diverging elements : thus in some of the true Babbling Thrushes an 

 approach is seen to the Muscieapiche, or Flycatchers, while the Wrens (Troylodytinw) and the Grass 

 Warblers (CisticoliniK) lead the student to the Titmice on the one hand and to the true Warblers on 

 the other. The true Thrushes are approached by the Babbling Thrushes and the Bulbuls. 



THE FIRST SUB-FAMILY OF THE TIMELIID^. THE WRENS (Troglodytina). 

 These are nearly all birds of small size, inhabiting the northern and temperate parts of both the 

 Old and New Worlds. They differ from the rest of the Babblers in having scarcely any perceptible 

 notch in the bill, which is rather long and curved ; the tail is in general short in proportion to the 

 body. The type of the family is 



THE COMMOX WREN (Troglodytes parvulus). 



With the exception of the Gold-crest, this is the smallest English bird : it is generally dis- 

 tributed throughout the whole of Europe, and ranges as far as Central Asia. In England it 

 is a general favourite, and, like the Robin, is accorded a certain amount of protection ; and to 

 many readers the old couplet about the " Robin and the Wren being God's cock and hen " will occur. 

 It is difficult, therefore, to account for the persecution to which the species was formerly subjected in 

 certain parts of Great Britain and even in France. Professor Newton* writes : "The curious 

 custom of ' hunting the Wren ' has been mentioned by many writers ; but little can be added 

 to the accounts of it given by the late Sir Henry Ellis, in his notes to Brand's ' Popular 

 Antiquities,' and by Thompson, though, from its practice obtaining in countries far apart, it 

 is most likely of much greater antiquity than has been often supposed. It seems to have 

 been first noticed by Charles Smith, in his ' State of the County of Cork,' published in 1750, as 

 followed in the South of Ireland, and subsequently by Valiancy (' Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis '). 

 On Christmas Day boys and men, each using two sticks one to beat the bushes, the other to fling at 

 the bird went out in a body to hunt and kill the Wren, which, from its habit of making but 

 short flights, was no doubt soon done to death. On the following day, the feast of St. Stephen, the 

 dead bird, hung by the leg between two hoops, crossed at right angles and decked with ribbons, was 

 carried about by the ' Wren-boys,' who sang a song beginning, ' Droelin, Droelin, ri an t-eiim ' 

 (that is, 'Wren, Wren, king of birds'), and begged money 'to bury the Wren.' This ceremony, 

 which, however it may have arisen, had become quite senseless, was, when Thompson wrote, 

 falling into disuse, and in 1845 the then Mayor of Cork, by proclamation, forbade its continuance. 

 Mr. Halliwell (' Nursery Rhymes ') notices the same practice in the Isle of Man, and gives the words 

 there sung; while on February 4th, 1846 (as appears by the Literary Gazette, p. 131, of the 

 7th of that month), Mr. Crofton Croker drew attention to the subject at a meeting of the British 

 Archaeological Association, and it was stated that a similar custom existed in Pembrokeshire, where 

 on Twelfth Day a Wren was carried from house to house in a box with glass windows surmounted 

 by a wheel, to which ribbons were hung. Sonnini (' Voyage dans la haute et la basse Egypte') 

 mentions a like ceremony practised a century ago, towards the end of December, at La Civtat, 

 near Marseilles, but there the Wren's murderers were armed with swords and pistols, and their 

 victim was slung to a pole borne, as if it were a heavy load, on the shoulders of two men, who 

 paraded the village, and then, after gravely weighing it in a pair of great scales, all gave themselves 

 up to festivity. It is for antiquaries to throw light on the origin of this widely-spread distort, of 

 which many unsatisfactory explanations have been attempted. It has been ascribed to a Wren 

 which, alighting on a drumhead, roused and saved from defeat sorae Protestant troops in the Irish 

 civil wars of the seventeenth century. Others refer it to a similar incident some centuries earlier, in 

 the wars of the Danish occupation of Ireland. Others say that the Wren was an object of so 

 great veneration to the ' Druids,' that the early Christian missionaries enjoined its persecution upon 



* Edition of Yarrell's " British Birds," p. 4GO. 



