A GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN 79 



migrants in Heligoland, found a space on the seashore 

 alive with gold-crests whispering and singing. As he 

 looked, just on nightfall, a few of them rose almost verti 

 cally, like the queen bee on her marriage flight, and called 

 to the rest, and presently the whole throng of them, still 

 calling, disappeared into the night ; and Gatke finishes 

 his description thus : &quot; Later still, as we gaze upwards 

 to the night sky, sown with innumerable points of light, 

 we imagine that those myriads of shining worlds are all 

 that moves between us and the Infinite, while all the time 

 in the heights above us are travelling thousands, nay 

 millions, of living creatures towards one fixed goal 

 small and weak, like this little gold-crest of ours, 

 but all guided as surely as are the farthest gleaming 



stars/ 



The wrens seem to be endowed with peculiar vitality. 

 We meet the common wren high up amid the snows on a 

 Swiss mountain. The multitude of gold-crests, as well 

 as their long journeys, is evidence of their endurance 

 and of the immense range of their breeding places. They 

 breed in the South, and they breed in the Arctic Circle. 

 They breed as successfully in Northern Asia as in Nor 

 thern Europe. As one looks at the minute body in the 

 matchbox, it seems impossible that so much should be 

 achieved by so frail a being. The beak is as thin and 

 pointed as a pin ; but what a marvellous weapon it is ! 

 We have no nest that quite compares with the gold- 

 crest s. It is suspended generally under a fir bough on 

 gossamer ropes, and the frame is built (as Miss Turner 

 once saw) very much as a geometric spider makes its 

 web. The frame comes first, and the padding later. The 

 smallest birds are the best builders. The long-tailed tit, 

 which looks about four times as big as it is, builds perhaps 

 the most beautiful of all the nests, though the engineering 



