318 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



Description. 



Middle of back with the feathers dark-brown centrally, then rufous, and edged 

 with pale- fulvous (sometimes with whitish). Hood and upper part of nape continu- 

 ous chestnut; a line of the same from behind the eye; sides of head and neck ashy; 

 a broad light superciliary band; beneath whitish, with a small circular blotch of 

 brownish in the middle of the upper part of the breast; edges of tail feathers, pri- 

 marj- quills, and two bands across the tips of the secondaries, white; tertiaries nearly 

 black; edged externally with rufous, turning to white near the tips; lower jaw yel- 

 low ; upper black. 



This species varies in the amount of whitish edging to the quills and tail. 



Length, six and twenty-live oue-hundredths inches; wing, three inches. 



Hd). — Eastern North America to the Missouri; also on Pole Creek and Little 

 Colerado River, New Mexico. 



This species occurs in New England only as a winter 

 visitor. It arrives from the North about the last of October, 

 and remains in swamps and sheltered thickets through the 

 winter, and until the first week in ]\Iay. While with us, it 

 is gregarious, and often visits stubble-fields and gardens, 

 where it feeds upon the seeds of grasses and various weeds. 

 It has, at this season, a persistent twitter, which is uttered 

 by all the members of the flock at short intervals. As it 

 sometimes utters a sweet soft warble in the spring, it un- 

 doubtedly possesses quite a song during the mating season. 



It is not impossible that this bird sometimes breeds in 

 the most northern sections of these States ; but there is no 

 authenticated instance on record of its doing so. Tlie bird 

 alluded to in the " Proceedings of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History" (vol. V. p. 213) was undoubtedly the 

 Chipping Sparrow. 



The Tree Sparrow breeds, according to Mr. Hutchins, 

 around the Hudson's Bay settlements. " Its nest is placed 

 in the herbage, is formed externally of mud and dry 

 grass, and lined with soft hair or down, — probably from 

 plants, —in the manner of the Yellow-bird." The eggs 

 are about five in number: they are of a light grayish-blue 

 color, and are marked with spots and blotches of two shades 

 of brown and red. To compare them with another species, 

 I would say that they almost exactly resemble small speci- 

 mens of the eggs of the common Song Sparrow. They are 



