SPECIES 4. CERTHM PALUSTRIS. 
MARSH WREN. 
[Plate XIL— Fig. 4.] 
Motacilla palustris [regulus minor), Baktram, p, 291. — Peale’s 
Museum, JV’o. 7282. 
This obscure but spirited little species has been almost over- 
looked by the naturalists of Europe, as well as by those of its 
own country. The singular altitude in which it is represented 
will be recognized by those acquainted with its manners, as one 
of its most common and favourite ones, while skipping through 
among the reeds and rushes. The Marsh Wren arrives in 
Pennsylvania about the middle of May, or as soon as the reeds 
and a species of Nymphea, usually called splatter-docks, which 
grow in great luxuriance along the tide water of our rivers, are 
sufficiently high to shelter it. To such places it almost wholly 
limits its excursions, seldom venturing far from the river. Its 
food consists of flying insects, and their larvae, and a species of 
green grasshoppers that inhabit the reeds. As to its notes it 
would he mere burlesque to call them by the name of song. 
Standing on the reedy borders of the Schuylkill or Delaware, 
in the month of June, you hear a low crackling sound, some- 
thing similar to that produced by air bubbles forcing their way 
through mud or hoggy ground when trod upon; this is the song 
of the Marsh Wren. But as among the human race it is not 
given to one man to excel in every thing, and yet each, per- 
haps, has something peculiarly his own; so among birds we find 
a like distribution of talents and peculiarities. The little bird 
now before us, if deficient and contemptible in singing, excels 
in the art of design, and constructs a nest, which, in durability, 
warmth and convenience, is scarcely inferior to one, and far 
VOL. II. — K 
