Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/120

104 happiness as their betters; but there is nothing about them to catch the imagination of the historian and they will never be famous. I have been perplexed as to how I should deal with them in these papers. To attempt to describe each species is out of the question, for there are many, and they are mostly so like each other that even the title " ornithologist " does not qualify one to distinguish them at a distance. If you can distinguish them with certainty when you have them in your hand, you will fully deserve the title. Jerdon was all in confusion about them. With the aid of the large collections now in the British Museum they are supposed to have been successfully unravelled, and those who please may study them in Mr. Oates's book. The best I can do here is to try to help the ordinary lover of birds to know a Wren Warbler and a Tree Warbler when he sees them, and to particularise a few species which have enough of distinctive character to separate them from the crowd.

To begin with the Wren Warblers, they are small, dingy birds with long tails, which go about among bushes and rushes and reeds, exterminating little insects. They enjoy this life so much that they moved the envy of Charles Kingsley, and you may almost recognise them from his description—

But you must .not suppose that the said "melodious dream" is a high class composition from a musician's point of view. These little birds are not without a humble conceit of their vocal powers, all the same,