140 | WREN. 
Male; weight, about two drachms and three quarters; length, 
about four inches or a little over; the bill is rather long, 
and rounded at the tip, and is slender in shape, the upper 
mandible dark brown, the lower paler, the tip only dark; 
iris, dark brown; over it is a streak of pale brown. © Head 
on the crown, neck on the back, and nape, rusty reddish 
brown barred transversely with narrow streaks of dark brown; 
chin and throat, plain greyish dull buff, as is the breast, but 
darker lower down, and reddish brown on the sides; back, 
reddish brown, marked with transverse dusky bars. 
The wings, which are much rounded, have the first feather 
only half as long as the second, which is of the same length 
as the seventh; the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth nearly 
equal in length, but the fourth the lengest, with three or 
four small round white spots; greater and lesser wing coverts, 
also rufous, and barred; primaries, barred alternately with 
tawny brown and black; secondaries and tertiaries, dusky, 
barred. on the outer webs with reddish white. The upper 
tail coverts, which extend over more than half the tail, have 
the two outer feathers shorter than the others; under tail 
coverts, of like length, reddish brown, indistinctly barred with 
darker brown, and tipped with dull white. Legs, toes, and 
claws, ight brown. 
The female is rather less in size, rather more red in colour, 
and the transverse bars less distinct. 

Since this article was written, and while it was on its way 
to the press, I have received the most melancholy intelligence 
of the awfu! death on the railway, near Retford, of my dear 
friend whose name I have mentioned in it, Hugh Edwin 
Strickland. Little did I think, when I sat next to him at 
the dinner on the first day of the meeting of the British 
Association at Hull, for which we had secured the two adjoining 
places, that I should never see him again; as little that a 
letter he forwarded to me in the interim would be the last 
I should ever receive from him; as little when he spoke of 
having attended every, or nearly every previous meeting that 
he would never attend another; and as little when we wished 
one another good-bye in his lodging, where he left me writing, 
on the last day of the meeting, but twenty-four hours 
before his death, that we should never again meet in this 
world! Alas! that the words of Professor Sedgwick, near 
