ie 
782 WRIGHTIA. 
when the windows are left open, into rooms 
where plants are kept in pots. The chief food of 
both species consists of small flies or small cater- 
pillars, such as roll up leaves of trees and shrubs, 
and particularly the rose-leaf roller or “ worm i’ 
the bud,” together with all the most destructive 
species of aphides. Where the birds are plenti- 
ful, therefore, they may prove of no little service 
to the farmer in thinning, on their first appear- 
ance, wheat flies, the blue dolphins, the hop-flies, 
and the turnip or the pea plant-lice. Yet farmers 
who are unacquainted with their exclusively 
feeding on insects, are but too apt to class them 
without distinction, among inimical birds, as if 
all birds fed alike, and were ready and eager to 
devour whatever crop they might find cultivated 
in the fields. Gardeners are even more preju- 
diced, particularly against the hay-bird, which 
in some parts of England, they opprobriously 
_ call the cherry-chopper, from a notion that it 
devours cherries. That it is very frequently 
found on cherry-trees, is most true; and, if 
watched, it may be seen busily picking among 
the fruit ; yet it really does not touch the cher- 
ries, but is in pursuit of the destructive cherry 
aphis, a species which is particularly injurious, 
and which commences its ravages on the cherry- 
leaves about the end of April, exactly at the 
time when the hay-bird arrives, as if Providence 
had ordered the insects to multiply at this season 
to supply the hay-birds with food. No more does 
the hay-bird ever taste one of the strawberries in 
the bed where it may have built its nest, or the 
pease in the adjoining kitchen-garden, its bill 
indeed being too slender to bruise pease, and its 
gullet too narrow to swallow them unbruised, 
even were it inclined to attack them. White of 
Selbourne, therefore, did not manifest his usual 
| accuracy of observation, when he said, that the 
willow-wrens, meaning the hay-bird and chiff- 
chaff, are horrid pests in a garden, destroying 
the pease, cherries, and currants,—an opinion 
which he no doubt adopted without due exami- 
nation from the gardeners. Had he ever pro- 
cured tame ones, and tried them, when very 
hungry, with cherries, currants, strawberries, 
and with green pease, both raw and boiled, he 
would have soon had ocular demonstration that 
they would rather starve than eat fruit or seeds. 
So far, then, from persecuting and killing these 
| birds, as gardeners so frequently do, every means 
should be taken to encourage them to breed by 
protecting their nests. 
WRIGHTIA. A genus of ornamental, exotic, 
ligneous plants, of the dog’s-bane tribe. ‘Two 
species are noticed in the article Nerivm ; and 
WURMBEA. 
several other species, all evergreen shrubs, have 
been introduced to British collections from India 
and Australia. 
WRYNECK, —scientifically Yunx Torguilla. 
A British bird of passage, belonging to the wood- 
pecker group of climbers. It arrives in Britain 
in the first or second week of April and departs 
toward the end of August or in the early part 
of September. It frequents orchards, coppices, 
plantations, tree-rows, and tall hedges; and it has 
the same habits as the woodpeckers, yet seeks its 
food chiefly on the ground, and seldom climbs. 
It feeds on caterpillars, ants, and other larve 
and insects; and may often be seen near ant- 
hills, consuming large quantities of these pests 
of pastures. 
a habit of making curving motions with its head 
and neck somewhat similar to the undulatory 
movements of a snake; and, for the same reason, 
it is called in some parts of England the snake- 
bird. Its total length is 7 inches; its bill is 
straight, pointed, and almost cylindrical; its 
tongue is extensible, and has the same kind of 
organic mechanism as that.of the woodpeckers, 
but wants the spines; its plumage, in the upper 
surfaces of the body, has a brown colour, beauti- 
fully vermiculated with small blackish waves, and | 
marked longitudinally with black and fawn-co- 
loured streaks—and, in the under surface, is whit- 
ish transversely streaked with black; and its tail 
quills are similar to those of many other birds. 
The wryneck does not build a nest, but deposits 
its eggs on the powdery fragments of decayed 
wood within the hole of atree. The eggs amount 
to from 6 to 10, and are white, smooth, and | 
shining, and measure each 94 lines in length and 
7 in breadth. 
WULFENIA. A beautiful hardy annual plant, 
of the figwort tribe. It constitutes a genus of 
itself; and takes its specific name from its native 
country, Carinthia ; and was introduced to Britain 
in 1817. It has a height of about 20 inches; 
and carries blue flowers in July and August; | 
and it will thrive in any common soil. 
WURMBEA. A genus of bulbous- rooted, 
Cape-of-Good-Hope plants, of the melanthium © 
family. Four species, varying in height from 6 © 
to 15 inches, and all loving a somewhat light © 
soil and propagable from offsets, have been in- | 
Three of _ 
| them have white flowers, and the other has pur- 
ple flowers; all bloom in May and June; and | 
they may be classed in some instances as curious, | 
troduced to the gardens of Britain. 
and in others as ornamental. 
WYCH ELM. See Hum. 
It takes its name of wryneck from | 
oe 
