"Wren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... judges, the manner of his great original was judiciously imitated. Soon after this, he proceeded to give the public a specimen of his abilities in another kind, and succeeded with the greatest applause; which was his Observations on Monsieur de Serbiere's Voyage into England, written to Dr. Wren, professor of astronomy in Oxford; printed in octavo, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... men, by name Wren, became a great friend of mine, and many a time I visited him or spent a night in his lonely little hut, which was located in a small clearing surrounded by dense bush and immediately over a small and turbulent stream, which he used to say was always good company and prevented his ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... of Brownsea was a Mr. Benson, who succeeded Sir Christopher Wren as first surveyor of works. When he bought the island, he began to alter the old castle and make it into a residence. The burgesses of Poole claimed that the castle was a national defence, of which ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... black-throated babbler or wren-babbler. This is another small bird. Its general hue is olive brown. The throat is black, as is the head, but ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... scientists had been in the habit of meeting at some place in London to discuss philosophical and scientific subjects for mental advancement. In 1648, owing to the political disturbances of the time, some of the members of these meetings removed to Oxford, among them Boyle, Wallis, and Wren, where the meetings were continued, as were also the meetings of those left in London. In 1662, however, when the political situation bad become more settled, these two bodies of men were united under a charter from Charles II., and Bacon's ideas were practically expressed in that learned body, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... exchange birds' eggs with some correspondent. I have eggs of the wild canary, wren, martin, robin, cat-bird, swallow, guinea-hen, quail, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... And the Christmas-tree refuses? There's a puzzle for your mother? I'll present you with another! Tell me why, you question-asker, Cruel, heartless mother-tasker— Why, of all the trees before her, Gathered round, or spreading o'er her, Jenny Wren should choose the apple For her nursery and chapel! Or Jack Daw build in the steeple High above the praying people! Tell me why the limping plover O'er moist meadow likes to hover; Why the partridge ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... "The wren," he says, "is an active songster among the hazel boughs. Beautifully hooded birds, wood-peckers, fair white birds, herons, sea-gulls, come to visit me." There is no mournful music in his island; and as for loneliness, there is no ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... penetrated, and carrying the electric pulse, charged with the burden of human thought, from continent to continent, from the Old World to the New, is a testimonial to his greatness.... The Latin inscription in the church of St. Paul's in London, referring to Sir Christopher Wren, its architect,—'If you would behold his monument, look around you,'—may be applied in a far more comprehensive sense to our friend, since the great globe itself has become ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... rode over once or twice from Litchfield that next summer to fetch Sylvia and to administer comfort to Hannah. He was a quaint, prim little gentleman, neat as any wren, but mild-mannered as wrens never are, and in a moderate way kindly and sympathetic. When the children had haled their lovely sister away to see their rustic possessions, Parson Everett would sit down in a high chair, lay aside ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Louisiana Purchase Exposition, it was felt that the Orangery of the Royal Palace of Kensington would be representative of English domestic building at one of its happiest periods, and a tribute also to the memory of the great architect, Sir Christopher Wren. In the Orangery of Kensington was found a building that could be strictly reproduced to its real size. The Orangery was 170 feet long and had a range of sash windows uninterrupted by doorways, the central ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... centuries had passed from the creation of Magdalen Tower that the central gateway into Christ Church was surmounted by the well-known Tom Tower, erected by Sir Christopher Wren to hold "Great Tom", a mighty bell which once belonged to Osney Abbey. This was the first of the domes to rear its head. But it was not long left solitary. Seventy years afterwards the great dome ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... is to be desired when one may, when he dines or designs, touch elbows with such choice spirits as Ictinus, Michael Angelo, Vitruvius, Vignola, Piranesi, San Gallo, Bramante, Christopher Wren, Inigo Jones, Charles Bulfinch, Viollet le Duc, Gamier Freres (N.B.—There is only one of him), ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 08, August 1895 - Fragments of Greek Detail • Various
... said to the reed that grew by the river: "It is no wonder that you make such a sorrowful moaning, for you are so weak that the little wren is a burden for you, and the lightest breeze must seem like a storm-wind. Now look at me! No storm has ever been able to bow my head. You will be much safer if you grow close to my side so that I may shelter you from the wind that is now ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Prior, Dryden, Swift, and Pope, who, however, are numbered more frequently among the wits of the reign of Anne. Robert Boyle distinguished himself for experiments in natural science, and zeal for Christian knowledge; and Christopher Wren for his genius in architectural art. But the two great lights of this reign were, doubtless, Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke, to whom the realm of natural and intellectual philosophy is more indebted than to any other men of genius from the time ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... southernmost bays were pulled down: In this room the fine fifteenth century oaken roof, with its carved ornaments, has been preserved, but at Salisbury the roof is modern, with a plaster ceiling. Lincoln's new library, designed by Wren and erected in 1674, is next to this old room. According to a 1450 catalogue now preserved at Lincoln the library contained one hundred and seven works, more than seventy of which now remain. Among the ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... the Canary-bird (Fringilla canaria) showed its green belly and grey back and wings, singing a note unknown to us; and an indigenous linnet (F. teydensis), small and green-robed, hopped over the ground tame as a wren. We saw nothing of the red-legged partridge or the Tetraonidae, reported ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... branches, and my heart Leaps with the life in that full chirp that breathes; The brown, full-breasted sparrow with a dart Is at my feet amid the swaying wreaths Of grass and clover; trooping blackbirds come With haughty step; the oriole, wren and jay Revel amid the cool, green moss in play, Then off in clouds of music; while the drum Of scarlet-crested woodpecker from yon Old Druid-haunting oak sends toppling down A ruined memory of ages past; O life and death—how ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... of news which the skipper managed to spell out was the notice of a reward of five hundred pounds awaiting the person who should recover Lady Harwood's necklace of twelve diamonds and fourteen rubies and deliver it to Mr. Peter Wren, solicitor, Water Street, St. John's. The notice went on to say that this necklace, together with other smaller and less valuable articles of jewelry, had been taken by force from the shipwrecked company of the bark Durham Castle, which had gone ashore and to pieces in a desolate place called ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... aloud to nobody in particular, "why most birds don't know how a house should be built. Of all the birds in Pleasant Valley the only good nest-builder I know is Long Bill Wren. He must be a very sensible fellow, because he puts a roof ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Beachey, with plans in his hand, looking full of thought and starting into life and action. Spent an hour looking over the books of prints in the library—Fanny particularly pleased with a Houbracken: Harriet with Daniel's Indian Antiquities: my father with Sir Christopher Wren's and Inigo Jones's designs. After dinner Richard Ruxton came in, and said my aunt and uncle had thoughts of coming up to see the balloon. In the evening at Astley's. The second day to see the elephant: how I pitied this noble animal, cooped up under the command of a scarcely human creature, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... museums and collections, and in making excursions to places in the neighbourhood and to Oxford. I was absorbed by St. Paul's, saw it from end to end, and from top to bottom, stood in the crypt, where Sir Christopher Wren lies buried,—Si monumentum requiris, circumspice—mentally compared Wellington's burial-place here with that of Napoleon on the other side of the Channel, then went up to the top of the building and looked out to every side over ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... was as enthusiastic as the girls; she climbed over fallen tree trunks, grubbed among dead leaves, jumped the brook and scaled fences with delightful energy. It was she who pointed out the heron sailing overhead, and noticed the gold-crested wren's nest hanging under the branch of a fir, a little battered with autumn rain, and too high, alas! to be taken, but a most interesting item to go down in the note-books. The girls could hardly be persuaded to tear themselves away from the glory of the woods, and ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... in the hill. The heron, the lang solemn fellow, kens o' the greenwood fairies and the wood elfins, and the wild geese that squatter on the tap o' the Muneraw will croak to ye of the merry maidens and the girls o' the pool. The wren—him that hops in the grass below the birks—has the story of the Lost Ladies of the Land, which is ower auld and sad for any but the wisest to hear; and there is a wee bird bides in the heather-hill—lintie men call him—who sings the Lay of the West Wind, and the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... on the whole must be, that it wants freshness and natural development. This indeed will be most freely admitted by those who feel most strongly that all the old cunning of the master hand is yet in the wayward loving Bella Wilfer, in the vulgar canting Podsnap, and in the dolls' dressmaker Jenny Wren, whose keen little quaint weird ways, and precocious wit sharpened by trouble, are fitted into a character as original and delightfully conceived as it is vividly carried through to the last. A dull coarse web her small life seems made of; but even from its taskwork, which is undertaken for ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... 'Logonomia' cites hez for hath as peculiar to Lincolnshire. I find hayth in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote belcony. Our fect is only the O.F. faict. Thaim for them was common in the sixteenth century. We have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb thrash, thresh. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say instead for instid ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... what wonderful swinging baskets the Oriole makes for his baby-cradle? Well, it was the Magpie who taught him how, and he was the prize pupil, to be sure. But some of the birds were not like him, nor like the patient little Wren. Some of them were lazy and stupid and envious of Mother Magpie's cosy nest, which was already finished, while ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... and called, "Witchery, witchery, witchery," as if they appreciated their charming home, while nearby, a cardinal appeared like an arrow of flame from the bow of some unseen archer, and whistled several variations that rang through all the woodland. The house wren was fairly bubbling over with music and his rippling notes seemed to express the exuberance of life in all Nature; while the serene song of the woodthrush floated from far, dim forest depths—fit ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the treasures of France; but Lord Danby persuaded Charles to keep them. In 1698 they were barely saved from fire at Whitehall, and finally, by command of William III., they were properly repaired and a room was built at Hampton Court to receive them, by the architect, Sir Christopher Wren. At present they are in the South Kensington Museum, London. Of the original eleven ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... remember the long silence that followed and the distant voices that flashed across it now and then—the call of the mire drum in the marshes and the songs of the winter wren and the swamp robin. It ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... because in the early mythology of Greece some of their gods and goddesses were believed to have been birds. Birds, therefore, were particularly sacred, and their appearances and movements were of profound significance. The principal birds for signs were the raven, the crow, the heron, wren, dove, woodpecker, and kingfisher, and all the birds of prey, such as the hawk, eagle, or vulture, which the ancients classed together (W. R. Halliday, "Greek Divination"). Many curious instances, which were fulfilled, of bird omens are related ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... of the shadowed stream or from tuft to tuft of grass beside the woodland path, had ceased. But at times the cheery dipper still sang from the boulder whence the vole had dived to escape the big brown owl; and, when other birds had gone to sleep, the robin on the alder-spray and the wren among the willow-stoles piped their glad vespers to assure a saddened world that presently the winter's gloom would vanish before the coming ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... can show something for it," said Fred; "they allow me a lark's diet instead of a wren's, I can hold up my head like other people now, and I actually made my own legs and the table's carry me to the window yesterday, which is what I call getting on. But I do not think it is so with mamma. A fortnight ago she used to ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought, though only as a dilettante, of old St. Paul's, the morning star and focal beacon of England through centuries and dynasties, from old Augustine and Mellitus, up to those Paul's Cross sermons whose thunders shook thrones, and to noble Wren's masterpiece of art, he asked, 'Whither all this? Coleridge's dictum, that a cathedral is a petrified religion, may be taken to bear more meanings than one. When will life return to this ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... with a smile on it that illuminated its fierce-looking paint and naturally stern lineaments with a bright gleam of human feeling, "Chingachgook heard the laugh of Wah-ta-Wah, and knew it from the laugh of the women of the Iroquois. It sounded in his ears, like the chirp of the wren." ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... it was that a man must walk about with somebody on Commemoration week, and that it was a comfort to do so with ladies who wore their bonnets upon their heads, instead of, like most of those he met, remind him of what Cock Robin said to Jenny Wren ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... "that your change of dress betokens the neighbourhood of those pretty girls of whom you spoke in an earlier meeting. According to the Darwinian doctrine of selection, fine plumage goes far in deciding the preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we are told that fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It is rather unfair to rivals when ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Stillingfleet (Bishop of Worcester) was made Rector. The church was rebuilt by Wren in 1686 "in a neat, plain manner." The ancient tower remained, and was recased in 1704. The building is large, light, and airy, and is in the florid, handsome style we are accustomed to associate with Wren. At the west end is a fine late-pointed arch, communicating with the tower, in which there ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... love of animals is greater than Browning's, and none who has so frequently, so carefully, so vividly described them. It is amazing, as we go through his work, to realise the largeness of his range in this matter, from the river-horse to the lizard, from the eagle to the wren, from the loud singing bee to the filmy insect in the sunshine. I give a few examples. Mortal man could not see a lynx more clearly ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... tree, where he could see all that went on. Ol' Mistah Buzzard began to grin as soon as he saw that tin pail on Buster's neck. Then came others,—Redtail the Hawk, Scrapper the Kingbird, Redwing the Blackbird, Drummer the Woodpecker, Welcome Robin, Tommy Tit the Chickadee, Jenny Wren, Redeye the Vireo, and ever so many more. They came from the Old Orchard, the Green Meadows, and even down by the Smiling Pool, for the voices of Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow carried far, and at the sound of them everybody ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... mother began anew where it stopped, and completed it. Then the young one resumed the tune and finished it. This done, the mother sang over the whole series of notes a second time with great precision; and a second of the young attempted to follow her. The wren pursued the same course with this as with the first; and so with the third and fourth. It sometimes happened that the young one would lose the tune three, four, or more times in the same attempt; in which case the mother uniformly began where they ceased, and sung ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... meant to say in my last Note was simply this—that two persons, viz. Messrs. Christopher Wren and Chamberlayne, have asserted that the title "Defender of the Faith" had been used by our monarchs anterior to 1521; and in support of their assertions, cite the Black Book of the order of the garter, and several charters granted to the University of Oxford: that is, each ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... wren, the titmouse also, The little redbreast have their election, They fly I saw and together gone, Whereas hem list, about environ As they of kinde have inclination, And as nature impress and guide, Of everything list ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... they hang about the ovens of the Oven-birds, apparently determined to take possession of them, flying back after a hundred repulses, and yet not entering them even when they have the opportunity. Sometimes one is seen following a Wren or a Swallow to its nest beneath the eaves, and then clinging to the wall beneath the hole into which it disappeared. That it is a recurrence to a long-disused habit I can scarcely doubt. I may mention that twice I have seen birds of this species attempting ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... pierces the ear with his shrill note, as in the silent watches of the night. The song of the wren is so undisturbed, it is so full, and is heard so distinctly that it only reminds one, with its sweet music, how unusual is the silence; it does indeed seem but the ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... case in point. For many days, while strolling about in quest of bird lore, I heard a quaint little song in the bushy clumps, and that, too, in some of the most out-of-the-way places. "It is nothing but the house wren," I muttered to myself, I know not how often. "It isn't worth while to look for it when there are new birds to be found. Still, it's singular," I continued, "that the house wren should dwell in such secluded places. It would seem that his name is a misnomer—at ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... flight is practicable a moment after leaving the water. Certainly the water-thrushes (Seiurus ludovicianus, S. auricapillus, and S. noveboracensis) have taken many preliminary steps to becoming as aquatic as the dipper; and the winter-wren, and even the Maryland yellow-throat are not ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in diameter, and is placed from a foot to two feet out of water among the heavy rushes. The Purple Gallinule is known to build as many as five or six sham nests, a trait which is not confined to the Wren family. From four to twelve smooth shelled and spotted eggs are laid, and the nestlings when first hatched are clad in dark colored down. On leaving the nest they, accompanied by their parents, seek a more favorable situation ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... tradition it dwindles from these huge dimensions to the size of an eagle, a raven, or a woodpecker. Among the birds enumerated by Kuhn and others as representing the storm-cloud are likewise the wren or "kinglet" (French roitelet); the owl, sacred to Athene; the cuckoo, stork, and sparrow; and the red-breasted robin, whose name Robert was originally an epithet of the lightning-god Thor. In certain parts of France it is still believed ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... more striking indications of the changes of manners and customs that two or three hundred years have brought about, than these deserted churches. Many of them are handsome and costly structures, several of them were designed by WREN, many of them arose from the ashes of the great fire, others of them outlived the plague and the fire too, to die a slow death in these later days. No one can be sure of the coming time; but it is not too much to say of it that it has no sign in its outsetting tides, of the reflux to these churches ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... welcoming paw, elephants and mild clumsy buffaloes that gave good milk to the thirsty. Little grey squirrels frolicked in the branches of the trees, and the tiny birds Mummy told him about that lived in the yew hedge at Wren's End. Tony had himself been to Wren's End he was told, but he was only one at the time, and beyond a feeling that he liked the name and that it was a very green place his ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... a boy this time. "The weather is stormy, yet the fellow makes love between the showers in a barefaced way. That old fool of a tanner knows it, and has no more right feeling than if he were a boy. Aha, my Robin, fine robin as you are, I shall catch you piping with your Jenny Wren tonight!" The lieutenant shared the popular ignorance ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... came, how kind they all were! indeed, though it was a busy season with every bird, each anxious to finish its work, yet I heard an old Rook one day ask little Jenny Wren 'if he should help her,' as he met her trying to drag a large wisp of straw with all ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... been replaced by it. The clustered pillars really encased the Norman, as they have done in other cathedrals similarly treated. At Winchester, William of Wykeham cut the massive Norman into Perpendicular order, but at St. Paul's an outer encasement covered the Norman, as Wren showed when he wrote his account of the ruined church. A steeple was erected in 1221. There was a great ceremony at the rededication, by Bishop Roger Niger, in 1240, the Archbishop of Canterbury ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... speaks for himself in Thompson's 'To an English Nightingale': "What do you think of me? Do I sing by rote? Or by note? Have I a parrot's echo-throat? Oh no! I caught my strains From Nature's freshest veins. . . . . . "He A match for me! No more than a wren or a chickadee! Mine is the voice of the young and strong, Mine the soul of the brave and free!" This self-appreciation is confirmed by the greatest authority on birds, Audubon: "There is probably no bird in the world that possesses all the musical ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... bosom is black as a sloe! I heed not cuckoo, nor wren, nor swallow: Like a flying leaf in the sky's blue hollow The heart in my breast is, that ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Tom many strange and wonderful things, telling him absorbing stories the while. He showed him the limits of the ravages of the Great Fire, which he could remember well, as he was ten years old at the time. He took them into many of the churches afterwards built by Wren, and Tom stood lost in amaze at the magnificent proportions of the great St. Paul's, the inside of which he had not seen till today. He was shown also the site of one of the Great Plague pits; and Rosamund clung trembling, yet fascinated, to her ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... residential parrot, though cockatoos are plentiful; no scrub turkey though the megapode scampers in all directions in the jungle; no common black crow, nor butcher bird, though other shrikes (the magpie for instance) come and go; no wren, no finch, no lark? Scrub turkeys (TALLEGALLA LATHAMI), mound builders like the megapode, are plentiful all along the coast, at certain seasons visiting the scrub which margins the opposite beach, but they are not found on these islands. The ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... green of the different members of the forest blended their shades with the permanent colors of the pine and hemlock; and even the buds of the tardy oak were swelling with the promise of the coming summer. The gay and fluttering blue-bird, the social robin, and the industrious little wren were all to be seen enlivening the fields with their presence and their songs; while the soaring fish-hawk was already hovering over the waters of the Otsego, watching with native voracity for the appearance ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... born of woman,' said the Prince; 'I came forth from my mother's agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings. This, which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered. Is it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships at sea and a great dust of battles on shore; and casting ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... fly, 25 An' why can't I? Must we give in," Says he with a grin, "That the bluebird an' phoebe Are smarter 'n we be? 30 Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Does the leetle chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Jest show me that 5 Er prove 't the bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat, An' I'll back ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Shaftesbury House. Dwelling of James Barry. Residence of Dr. Isaac Watts. Prison of Lady Mary Grey. Studio of Thomas Gainsborough. Tomb of John Kyrle. Tomb of William Hogarth. Grave of Izaak Walton. Grave of William Penn. Monument of Wren. Grave of Lady Rachel Russel. Edgeworthstown. Garden of Sir Thomas More. Esher—Residence of Jane Porter. Grave of Sir Richard Lovelace. Grave of Grace Aguilar. Dwelling of Edmund Burke. Remains of Clarendon House. Flaxman's Monument. Village of Eyam. Monument of Edward Bird, R.A. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... flags in Leicester Square on flag days?" The girl's attention seemed to be concentrated on a patch of reeds where a water-hen was becoming vociferous. "Or do you pursue the line taken up by a woman I met last time I was on leave? She was a Wraf or a Wren or something of that kind, and at the time she was in mufti. But to show how up to date she was she had assimilated the jargon, so to speak, of the mechanics she worked with. It almost gave me a shock when she said to me in a confidential aside at a mutual friend's house, 'Have you ever sat ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer Have angels leaned to wonder out of Heaven At such uprush of intercession given, Here where to-day one soul two nations share, And with accord send up thro' trembling air Their vows to strive as Honour ne'er ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... one aside, which the testator declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable to take care ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... Library, University College, Oriel, Exeter, and some others, medieval or half medieval in their style, are Stuart in date. In Oxford the Middle Ages lingered long. Yon cupola of Christ Church is the work of Wren, yon towers of All Souls' are the work of a still later hand. The Headington stone, quickly growing black and crumbling, gives the buildings a false hue of antiquity. An American visitor, misled by the blackness of University ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... jerking his spasmodic throat, the oriole drifting like a flake of fire, the jolly bobolink and his happy mate, the mocking-bird imitating the notes of all, the red-bird with his one sweet trill, and the busy little wren, are all making the trees in our front yard ring with ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... highly-coloured Lord Mayors and aldermen and burghers and beef-eaters. And somehow Dick Whittington and his cat are mixed up with it all, and exhibitions with glass roofs and careful craftsmen and apprentices, and Christopher Wren. Alas and alack! Where is ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... our stalwart and broad-shouldered race. Our future generations must still tower proudly above the common herd in every respect; I want no plaything for a wife, but a woman, such as you yourself were in youth—tall, dignified and handsome. My heart goes forth to no gold-crested wren but to a really royal maiden.—Of what use to waste words! Paula, the noble daughter of a glorious father, is my choice. It came upon me just now like a revelation; I ask your blessing on my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wren can cling To a spray a-swing In a mad May wind, and sing, and sing, As if she'd burst for joy; Why cannot I, Contented lie, In His quiet arms, beneath His sky, Unmoved ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... upon the threshold, tense, thrilled, apparently speechless. Tom was reminded of a trim little wren poised upon the edge of its nest. This time it was more difficult to counterfeit an exclamation of joy, but the catch in "Bob's" voice, the moisture in her eyes, was attributed by her father to gladness at the sight ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... size flew up out of the ground and caught Ricardo by the throat! In vain he strove to separate the teeth, when the crow, stooping from the heavens, became the Princess Jaqueline, and changed Dick into a wren—a tiny bird, so small that he easily flew out of the jaws of the Giant and winged his way to a tree, ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... the entrance to Mercers' Hall, is a handsome stone-fronted house, built by Sir Christopher Wren. The houses adjoining the Hall were of similar ornamental character; although the unenclosed shop-fronts present a strange contrast with some of the improvements and superfluities of modern times. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... longitudinal space by projections at right angles to it, if not very frequently used, has long been known. A great example of it is to be found in the noble library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and is the work of Sir Christopher Wren. He has kept these cases down to very moderate height, for he doubtless took into account that great heights require long ladders, and that the fetching and use of these greatly add to the time consumed in getting or in replacing a book. On the other hand, the upper spaces of the ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... any process, be enabled to perceive moral and intellectual truths, are characterized by similar peculiarities of organization. They may differ from each other widely, but they still belong to the same class. An eagle and a wren are very unlike each other; but no one would hesitate to pronounce that they were both birds: so it is with the almost endless varieties of the monkey tribe. We all know that beasts, however sagacious, are incapable of abstract thought, or moral ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... manuscript on the table, and also some proofs. They were part of Our Mutual Friend, which was then appearing in monthly numbers; and on that morning a proof of one of the illustrations had arrived from Mr. Marcus Stone. It was the one in which 'Miss Wren fixes her idea.' I was then about sixteen or seventeen, and Dickens said, 'You are setting out in life; mind you always fix your idea.' He asked me what I was going to be, and I said a farmer. He said, 'Better be that than ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... of these and three mocking-bird nests. I'll show them to you. But the most particular one of all is the wren's nest in the fork of the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... for the sailors whose hearty brawls are done! Only the wandering gull brings word of the open wave, With shrill scream at her taffrail deriding her alien grave. Around the keel that raced the dolphin and the shark Only the sand-wren twitters from barren dawn till dark; And all the long blank noon the blank sand chafes and mars The prow once swift to follow the lure of the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... stone house, but he failed to report to me here at "The Nest." The female redstart, however, came several times to the gravel walk below me, evidently looking for material to begin her nest. And the wren, the irrepressible house wren, was and is in evidence every few minutes, busy carrying nesting-material into the box on the corner of the veranda. How intense and emphatic she is! And the male, how he throbs and palpitates with song! Yesterday an interloper ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... observable, that Fowls, for the most part, lay a greater number of Eggs than Birds, even many more than they can sit upon at one time. I have known about thirty Eggs lay'd by one common Poultry-Hen, but it is seldom that any Bird lays more than five or six, except the Wren, and the Tom-tit, and the Pigeon not more than two. Again, the Poultry, contrary to others of the winged Race, are armed with Spurs; and it is observable, that the Cocks of the common Poultry distinguish themselves from diurnal Fowls, by ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... laugh, much as he disapproved. Patricia fluttered and, as a wren might have done, perched presently ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... rhodora, the club-moss, the blooming clover, not of the hibiscus and the asphodel. He knows the bumblebee, the blackbird, the bat and the wren. He illustrates his high thought by common things out of our plain New England life: the meeting of the church, the Sunday-School, the dancing-school, a huckleberry party, the boys and girls hastening home from school, the youth in the shop beginning an unconscious courtship with his unheeding ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... solemn Buddhas, and the crowds of cheerful worshippers. I walked down the empty nave and came under the dome. Then something happened—the thing that always happens when one comes into touch with the work of a genius. And Wren's dome proves that he was that. I sat down, and the organ began to play; or rather, the dome began to sing. And down the stream of music floated in fragments visions of my journey—Indians nude like bronzes, blue-coated Chinese, white ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... washing tripe. The counsel for the Crown, in examining the witness, observed with ill-timed indelicacy, "He was washing bowels?"—"Yes, sir."—"The bowels of an animal, I suppose?"—"Yes, sir." The counsel sits down. Justice Maule: "Pray, was it a wren's stomach?" ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... sun shone. The yellow vetchling had climbed up from the ditch and opened its flower, and there were young nuts on the hazel bough. Far away in a copse a wood-pigeon called; nearer the blackbirds were whistling; a willow wren uttered his note high in the elm, and a distant yellowhammer sang ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... tell me whether you believe that the plainer head and less bright colours of a female chaffinch, the less red on the head and less clean colours of the female goldfinch, the much less red on the breast of the female bull-finch, the paler crest of golden-crested wren, etc., have been acquired by them for protection. I cannot think so any more than I can that the considerable differences between female and male house sparrow, or much greater brightness of the male Parus coeruleus (both of which build under cover) than of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... exchange specimens with any one. I would like very much to have some birds' eggs from the North. I send a list of eggs which have all been found in the Georgia woods: jaybird, cat-bird, sap-sucker, thrush (two kinds), redbird, bluebird, wren (different kinds), mocking-bird, woodpecker, partridge, bee-martin, and several kinds of sparrows. Any of these I would like to exchange ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... out is to make the entrance doorway too small for them to enter. A hole an inch in diameter will admit a wren or chickadee and bar out a sparrow, but it will also keep out most of the other birds. The usual doorway should be two inches in diameter. It is surprising how soon after we build our bird house we find a tiny pair making their plans to occupy it and to take up housekeeping. Sometimes ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... gentleman, and after an odd adventure at a masquerade, buries him in the Abbey Church, Bath. It is pleasantly told, and there are in it many genuine touches of humour. Miss Mitford has next Little Miss Wren, a beautiful trifle for old and young; and last is the Count of Trionto, as deep a piece of Italian romance as need accompany ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... field to avoid the windings of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones—the grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous scramble of all my life), the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Banded, polished, red as wine, Marbles crystal as the dew, Each with rainbows twisted through, Marbles gay in painted clay, Flashing, twinkling in your way, When the walk has blossomed so, Surely every one must know None need wonder who has heard Robin, wren, or Peter-bird; Sure the sign as song ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... The Crane Express How the Mole became Little Black Sambo Blind The Lantern and the Fan How Fire was brought to Why the Bear has a Short the Indians Tail Echo Why the Fox has a White Piccola Tip to his Tail The Story of the Morning- Why the Wren flies low Glory Seed Jack and the Beanstalk The Discontented Pine The Talkative Tortoise Tree Fleet Wing and Sweet Voice The Bag of Winds The Golden Fleece The Foolish Weather-Vane The Little Boy who wanted The Shut-up ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... great canon. The dippers are to my mind well-nigh the most attractive of all our birds. They stay through the winter in the Yellowstone because the waters are in many places open. We heard them singing cheerfully, their ringing melody having a certain suggestion of the winter wren's. Usually they sang while perched on some rock on the edge or in the middle of the stream; but sometimes on the wing. In the open places the western meadow larks were also uttering their singular beautiful songs. No bird escaped John Burroughs' eye; ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... and study. It was necessary to be very quiet, the birds in the saplings were so nervous; but keeping still in the woods in summer is not the easy performance it is elsewhere, though great are the inducements. From one side comes the chirp of the winter wren, from the other, low, excited calls of veeries, and nothing but absolute quiet seems necessary to capture some of the charming secrets of their lives. Meanwhile a dancing and singing host collects around one's head. I call up my philosophy; I resolve not to care, though I shall ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... completed work of Dickens, was printed in 1865. Mr. Boffin, the Golden Dustman with the great heart, Silas Wegg, Mr. Venus, the Riderhoods, Jenny Wren, the Podsnaps, the Veneerings, Betty Higden, Mrs. Wilfer, and the "Boofer Lady," are as fresh and as original as are any of his creations, and show no ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... not a beggar, And Jenny Wren's a bride, And larks hang singing, singing, singing, Over the wheat-fields wide, 10 And anchored lilies ride, And the pendulum spider Swings from side ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... a little book Full of a hundred tales, Like the gilt page the good monks pen, That is all smaller than a wren, Yet hath high towns, meteors, and men, And suns ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... is here," said Sir Walter, fixing his eyes upon Sir Christopher Wren. "It is possible that he may be of assistance in settling ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... your memory of seasons and places, so that A song, a call, a gleam of color, set going a sequence of delightful reminiscences in your mind. When a solitary great Carolina wren came one August day and took up its abode near me and sang and called and warbled as I had heard it long before on the Potomac, how it brought the old days, the old scenes back again, and made me for the moment ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of the liturgy between the Presbyterian and Episcopal divines known as the Savoy Conference. In 1663 he succeeded Juxon in the primacy, and in 1667 was elected Chancellor of Oxford. He built the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, which building is an early work of Sir Christopher Wren's. He offended the court party by his open disapproval of the king's morals, and retired in 1669 to his palace at Croydon, where he spent most of the remainder of his life. He was buried at the parish church at Croydon, where his tomb and effigy ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... the Observatory so conspicuous from without is the portion least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might be raised toward the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch. More modern science has taught its disciples better; and in Greenwich—which is an eminently ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England. I tell thee, they had not a hammer to begin with; and yet Wren built St. Paul's: not an articulated syllable; and yet there have come English Literatures, Elizabethan Literatures, Satanic-School, Cockney-School, and other Literatures;—once more, as in the old time of the Leitourgia, a most waste imbroglio, and world-wide jungle and jumble; waiting terribly ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... may be inherited, as when a wren rears its brood in turn within its own natal hollow; or one may build a new home such as is fashioned from year to year by gaunt and shadowy herons; or we may have it built to order, as do the drones of the wild jungle bees. In my case, I flitted like a hermit ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... work, or a clerk who will leave a few minutes writing only because the clock has struck the hour, is little better than a money-making machine. Work done in such a spirit did not give us men like Wren or Stephenson. Read their lives and you will see what I mean. If your work is thoroughly and honestly done, you have a right to your own price for it, if you can find a purchaser. You have a right to sell your labour at your own price, but ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... natural coral' through the delicate tracery, still a stray hip or haw for the birds, who abound here always. The poor birds, how tame they are, how sadly tame! There is the beautiful and rare crested wren, 'that shadow of a bird,' as White of Selborne calls it, perched in the middle of the hedge, nestling as it were amongst the cold bare boughs, seeking, poor pretty thing, for the warmth it will not find. And there, farther on, just under the bank, by the slender runlet, which still trickles between ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... seventeenth century is rich in individual geniuses; but they are individual. The level of art is very low. The big names of El Greco, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Vermeer, Rubens, Jordaens, Poussin, and Claude, Wren and Bernini (as architects) stand out; had they lived in the eleventh century they might all have been lost in a crowd of anonymous equals. Rembrandt, indeed, perhaps the greatest genius of them all, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... about the "reformation" of the cathedral church at Peterborough, as carried out by the soldiers of the Parliament in July of the preceding year, they were certainly well advised in taking this hint. Bishop Wren—an eager opponent of the Puritans—was at the time in prison, where ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... there are a great many churches, nearly all built by one man, Sir Christopher Wren, a very clever man. But you will say, 'Why do people want churches in the City? Didn't you say that everyone went away to their own houses at night and on Sundays? Isn't ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... we learn from Ovid and Lempriere, Led all wild beasts but Women by the ear; And had he fiddled at the present hour, We'd seen the Lions waltzing in the Tower; [64] And old Amphion, such were minstrels then, Had built St. Paul's without the aid of Wren. Verse too was Justice, and the Bards of Greece Did more than constables to keep the peace; 670 Abolished cuckoldom with much applause, Called county meetings, and enforced the laws, Cut down crown influence with reforming scythes, And served the Church—without demanding ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... or perhaps for luncheon—it is a trifle heavy for breakfast: 'Since the sixteenth century, and despite the work of Inigo Jones and the great Wren (not Jenny Wren: Christopher), architecture has had, in England especially, no legitimate development.' This is the only cathedral with a Bishop's ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... perfect animals than the blind puppy, and the naked rabbit; and the chick of the pheasant, and the partridge, has more perfect plumage, and more perfect eyes, as well as greater aptitude to locomotion, than the callow nestlings of the dove, and of the wren. The parents of the former only find it necessary to shew them their food, and to teach them to take it up; whilst those of the latter are obliged for many days to obtrude it into ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sleeping kine Couched in thy brightness dream of fields divine. Innumerable mountains rise, and rise, Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes, And yet thy benediction passeth not One obscure hiding-place, one little spot Where pleasure may be sent; the nested wren Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken;" ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... being proclaimed to be held on board the fleet, and the exercise to be in the James on Sunday the 3d December, Mr Wren, the chaplain of the Sun, preached in the morning, and our own minister, Mr Copland, in the afternoon. This day the Bee sailed for Engano, in hopes to recover some money and goods belonging to the Swan, from the inhabitants of that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... conceivable that the hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the butterfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... "Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer" (London, 1661), which was often reprinted and is still of some value, and a companion volume "Collection of Articles, Canons," etc. (London, 1684). Last but not least to be mentioned is the "Increpatio Barjesu" (London, 1660) of Matthew Wren, who was successively Bishop of Hereford, Norwich and Ely. It is a volume of polemical interpretations of Scripture, in reply to the Racovian catechism—a copy of which was in the Library—written during the author's imprisonment ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... gig was at the door of "The Manx Fairy" to take the bride and bridegroom home. They had sung "Mylecharane," and "Keerie fu Snaighty," and "Hunting the Wren," and "The Win' that Shook the Barley," and then they had cleared away the tables and danced to the fiddle of John the Clerk and the clarionet of Jonaique Jelly. Kate, with wild eyes and flushed cheeks, had taken part in everything, but always fiercely, violently, almost tempestuously, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... somebody, behind the oak. Davie looked a little frightened, for that was just what he was about to sing in his song. But he jumped up and ran around to the other side of the tree. And there was a little brown wren, and it had a little golden thread around its neck, and the thread was tied to a root of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Eagle would catch him, so that as soon as he reached the trees on the mountains he turned himself into a Wren and sought the small bushes under the tall trees. The Eagle saw the change, and at once began turning over and over in the air. When he had reached the ground, instead of an Eagle a Sparrow-hawk chased the Wren. Now the chase was fast indeed, for no place could the Wren find ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... "she weighs like a goose! I thought she'd be light as a wren; What a splendid supper we'll have to-night Off the Little Small ...
— All About the Little Small Red Hen • Anonymous
... still lying back in the chair. A wren had perched itself lovingly upon his shoulder, but Hibbert knew nothing of its presence. He was fast asleep—in the long, last sleep ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... not his champions, nor can they, when tried, do such feats of war as he. Is it meet to think that a little child should handle Goliath as David did? Or that there should be the strength of an ox in a wren? Some are strong, some are weak; some have great faith, some have little. This man was one of the weak, and therefore he went ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... song is entirely unlike that of any other Warbler, and is a loud, clearly whistled performance of five, six, or seven notes, turdle, turdle, turdle, resembling in tone some of the calls of the Carolina Wren. He is so persistent in his singing, however, that the Red-Breasted Merganser's simple croak would sometimes be preferable ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... wren thy myrtles shed On gentlest Otway's infant head, 20 To him thy cell was shown; And while he sung the female heart, With youth's soft notes unspoil'd by art, Thy turtles ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... association and the College League. The State work was definitely launched by the appointment of the following committees: Finance, Mrs. J. A. Fouilhoux, Mrs. Elliott Corbet, Dr. Florence Manion; literature, Mrs. Louise Trullinger, Mrs. A. E. Clark, Miss Emma Wold, Miss Blanche Wren; ways and means, Dr. Florence Brown Cassiday, Mrs. Caroline Hepburn, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... curious Australian honey eaters, with their feathered tongues, made to brush the sweet essences from flowers: and the two following cases contain the remaining varieties of the slender-beaked family. Here are the Creepers of Europe; the Nuthatches of North America and Europe; varieties of the Wren; and the Warblers of Guiana and Patagonia. The visitor next approaches the varieties of the family known as the tooth-beaked perching birds. To this family our choicest songsters belong. They fill five ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold |
