THE NEST OF THE WREN. 
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charming dell in Hyde Park, with its picturesque undulating 
aspect, miniature winding stream, rabbits, pheasants, and tame 
wood-pigeons and sparrows, as well as the eastern end of the 
ornamental water of St. James’s Park, where, in comparative 
seclusion, the cormorants have nested the last two summers, 
the heron stalks gravely around, and a small colony of gulls now 
disport themselves — are moves in the right direction. 
Cannot some effort be made to give the proposal of providing 
sanctuaries a trial ? The experiment would not be a costly 
one, and there is good reason for believing, if carried out, that 
our population would not only have the opportunity of seeing 
many birds which at present are strangers to us, but that in the 
quietude of our evening walks, at the proper season, we should 
have the pleasure of listening to the nightingales’ sweet song as 
well as that of other of Nature’s warblers. 
H. Chipperfield. 
THE NEST OF THE WREN. 
ONE of our birds has a better right to claim a character 
indisputably its own than the common wren, known 
to scientific ornithologists as Troglodytes parvulus, and 
to common folk as the “ Jenny ” or “ Kitty ” wren. 
It evinces its independence in the first place, perhaps by way of 
revenge for the formidable appellation bestowed, by setting at 
defiance all systems of scientific classification, as it combines in 
its small person qualities which appear severally to assign it to 
groups the most diverse one from another. In various other 
respects it emancipates itself from the usages and conventions of 
its fellows, as in its perennial song, but in no particular does it 
follow a line of its own so determinedly as in regard of its nest. 
To begin with, this structure — a specimen of which is to be 
seen in the upper bird gallery of the Natural History Museum 
— is constructed on a plan quite different from that of those 
birds with which it is possible to group the architect, and 
curiously resembling that of the water ousel, or dipper — to be 
seen in the same gallery — a creature of habits as different as 
possible, but having sundry other points of resemblance with 
the wren. 
More singular is, however, the habit of constructing a num- 
ber of nests, which none other of our native birds does, though 
blackcaps and garden warblers make a sort of rough beginning 
of several, as if to get their hands in before setting seriously to 
work. But in the case of the wren, a pair of birds will elabo- 
rately finish a couple of nests before they seem to make up their 
minds which is to be occupied for business purposes, the only 
difference being that the one so chosen is lined with feathers. 
