

NOTES AND QUERIES. 349 



BIRDS. 



The Wren of Iceland. — Skins of the Icelandic Wren are, I believe, 

 rare in collections. Prof. Newton was good enough to allow me to examine 

 one in his possession, and when in Copenhagen, last September, measure- 

 ments of the two skins in the Museum there were taken. From a 

 comparison of these three specimens with skins from Shetland and Faroe, 

 I found no Shetland or Faroe Wren with so long a wing as the Icelandic 

 bird, and the latter appears to me to have larger and stronger legs, although 

 the difference between the measurements of tarsus and hallux is slight. 

 The Icelandic Wren skins in Copenhagen were both dated Nov. 8th, 1834. 

 The Faroe skins in Copenhagen were four in number, and dated May 3rd, 

 1845, Dec. 5th, 1861, Nov. 19th, 1863, and May 11th, 1865, and were all 

 collected by Muller. Troglodytes borealis was described first by S. C. 

 Fischer, of Copenhagen, in the 'Journal fur Ornithologie ' for 1861, from 

 a specimen brought to him from the Faroes. Fischer's description is dated 

 Jan. 1861, so that none of the above Faroe specimens, save the oldest, 

 could have been seen by him. The Shetland Wren, if not identical with 

 the Faroe Wren, comes much nearer to it than the Icelandic form. — 

 Richard M. Barrington (Fassaroe, Bray, Co. Wicklow). 



The Wren Of Shetland. — In an article on this subject in 'The 

 Zoologist ' for August (pp. 294 — 297), by Mr. Henry Seebohm, the con- 

 clusion is arrived at tbat the Shetland Wren ought to be classed along with 

 the Faroe (and Iceland?) bird as belonging to a subspecies, which Mr. 

 Seebohm calls Troglodytes parvulus borealis. Setting aside the question as 

 to the desirability of subspecies at all, and whether " local race " would not 

 answer all purposes fulfilled by the more cumbrous arrangement, many 

 readers of ' The Zoologist ' will probably agree with me in thinking the 

 arguments brought forward in support of the contention somewhat weak. 

 As regards size, length of tail, and wing, we find (taking Mr. Seebohm's 

 own figures) that, while the Shetland Wren exceeds his typical form in 

 wing by *06 in., it is exceeded by the Faroe bird by no less than *14 in. ; 

 while, as regards tail, the typical race actually exceeds the so-called Shet- 

 land variety by *04 in., while the Faroe race exceeds it by -25 in. It is 

 only in the culmen and hallux that we find the Shetland Wren approxi- 

 mating to the Faroe. With regard to the Wrens from Iceland in the Copen- 

 hagen Museum, these are decidedly larger by measurement than the Shet- 

 land Wren as given in Mr. Seebohm's article, and approximate very closely 

 indeed to those from Faroe in the same collection. The following measure- 

 ments I have been able to obtain through the kindness of Herr Herluf 

 Winge, of the Museum : — Iceland (2), average wing 2 in., tail 1-44 in., 

 culmen -62 in., hallux -41 in. ; Faroe (4), average wing 1*98 in., tail 1-46 in., 

 culmen -57 in., hallux -425 in. ; Denmark (2), average wing 1-9 in., tail 

 1*41 in., culmen -53 in., hallux -38 in. ; Italy (1), wing 1*81 in., tail 



