on a mossy trunk, busy at its old fascinating occupation of deftly
picking off the running ants.

It is melancholy to think that this quaint and beautiful bird of a
unique type has been growing less and less common in our country during
the last half a century, or for a longer period. In the last fifteen or
twenty years the falling-off has been very marked. The declension is not
attributable to persecution in this case, since the bird is not on the
gamekeeper's black list, nor has it yet become so rare as to cause the
amateur collectors of dead birds throughout the country systematically
to set about its extermination. Doubtless that will come later on when
it will be in the same category with the golden oriole, hoopoe,
furze-wren, and other species that are regarded as always worth killing;
that is to say, it will come--the scramble for the wryneck's
carcass--if nothing is done in the meantime to restrain the enthusiasm
of those who value a bird only when the spirit of life that gave it
flight and grace and beauty has been crushed out of it--when it is no
longer a bird. The cause of its decline up till now cannot be known to
us; we can only say in our ignorance that this type, like innumerable
others that have ceased to exist, has probably run its course and is
dying out. Or it might be imagined that its system is undergoing some
slow change, which tells on the migratory instinct, that it is becoming
more a resident species in its winter home in Africa. But all
conjectures are idle in such a case. It is melancholy, at all events for
the ornithologist, to think of an England without a wryneck; but before
that still distant day arrives let us hope that the love of birds will
have become a common feeling in the mass of the population, and that the
variety of our bird life will have been increased by the addition of
some chance colonists and of many new species introduced from distant
regions.