CANON WREN. 
Catherpes mexicanus conspersus RIDGWAY. 
PLATE IX. 
q cee AUTHOR of this work esteems himself especially happy in having obtained 
the assistance of Prof. Robert Ridgway, of the Smithsonian Institution, who is 
equally prominent as a scientific ornithologist and an artist. He accomplished the task 
of bringing a number of our birds before the readers eyes perfectly true to nature, both 
in form and colors, and all his pictures showing, moreover, an ideal apprehensive 
perception. A most excellent representation is the one of our CaNon WreEN, which he 
had sufficient opportunity to observe in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. — 
As I never had an opportunity of observing our western birds, I beg leave, in the 
interest of my readers, to quote from a classical sketch of Dr. Elliott Coues. He writes 
as follows: ‘The fact that I had never seen it at Fort Whipple, Arizona, supported 
this notion of its limited distribution, and in my ‘Prodome’ of 1886 1 gave the bird 
as one generally distributed over the southern and western portions of Arizona, up to 
Fort Mojave at least. I now see that its absence from that locality—at any rate, 
its rarity, so great that it never came under my observation—was due to the typo- 
graphical features of the place, not its geographical position. There were plenty of 
rocks about the fort (rocks, like reptiles and cactuses, are natural products of Arizona), 
just suiting the wants of Salpinctes; but this immediate vicinity lacked the singular 
walled chasms with which many portions of the Territory are scored and seamed— 
those reproductions on a smaller scale of the Grand Cafion of the Colorado itself, most 
wonderful crack of the ground in America—and such rifts of solid rock alone are 
entirely to the liking of the Cafion Wren. So it fell out that it was left for the latest 
ornithologists of the South-west—for Allen, Aiken, Ridgway, and Henshaw—to show 
that the range of the bird extends from Arizona and New Mexico, and portions of 
Texas and southern California, into Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. How much further 
it may actually reach we do not know; but there is nothing in the analogies of the 
case to forbid the supposition that the Cafion Wren may push northward wherever its 
favorite resorts can be found. For it is by no means the tender, semi-tropical bird we 
may have somewhat unconsciously supposed; it is resident in all’the Territories just 
named; it winters in Colorado, Utah, and Nevada; and if it is ever subjected to the 
migratory impulses which most of the Wrens feel at times, there is nothing but the 
lack of suitable haunts to restrain its movements. 
‘““We remember the ‘rift within the lute;’ in the Cafion Wren we have the lute 
within the rift—a curious little animated music-box, utterly insignificant in size and 
appearance, yet fit to make the welkin ring with glee. This bird-note is one of the 
most characteristic sounds in nature; nothing matches it exactly; and its power to 
impress the hearer increases when, as usually happens, the volume of the sound is 
strenghtened by reverberation through the deep and sinuous cafion, echoed from side to 
