338 
WINTER WREN. 
feathers and breast, dirty white, with minute transverse touches 
of a drab or clay colour; sides under the wings speckled with 
dark brown, black, and dirty white; belly and vent thickly 
mottled with sooty black, deep brown, and pure white, in trans- 
verse touches; tail very short, consisting of twelve feathers, the 
exterior one, on each side, a quarter of an inch shorter, the rest 
lengthening gradually to the middle ones; legs and feet a light 
clay colour, and pretty stout; bill straight, slender, half an inch 
long, not notched at the point, of a dark brown or black above, 
and whitish below; nostril oblong; eye light hazel. The female 
wants the points of white on the wing coverts. The food of 
this bird is derived from that great magazine of so many of the 
feathered race, insects and their larvae, particularly such as 
inhabit watery places, roots of bushes, and piles of old timber. 
It were much to be wished that the summer residence, nest 
and eggs, of this bird were precisely ascertained, which would 
enable us to determine whether it be, what I strongly suspect 
it is, the same species as the common domestic Wren of Britain, 
