48 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
MARSH WARBLER. 
(^Acrocephalus palustris.) 
The Marsh Warbler is a bird which occupies a 
peculiarly interesting position in British ornith- 
ology, as it is only of late years that its position 
as a British-breeding species has been established 
beyond all question. Even now the localities in 
which it has been found are so few, and at the 
same time there seems so little reason why it 
should not be a summer visitor to many others, 
that it probably still awaits discovery in a number 
of suitable spots in which it has never yet been 
recorded, and it is possible for anyone who 
watches and searches for birds to find the Marsh 
Warbler for himself and add to the universal 
stock of knowledge about this species. The differ- 
ence in the plumage of the Marsh and Reed 
Warblers is so slight as hardly to afford any help 
in the search, and it does not even seem that the 
best authorities are exactly agreed about the points 
of difference. The localities haunted by the scarcer 
species are the moist overgrown withy-beds beloved 
by the Sedge Warbler, rather than the Reed 
Warbler's watery cane-thickets ; but the osier-beds 
and reed-beds often adjoin one another so closely 
that the Reed and Marsh Warblers may often be 
