NESTING OF THE WHITE-EYED GEEENLET 523 



This was one of the earliest known species of the genus, 

 having been described as the " Green Flycatcher" by Pennant, 

 and the "Hanging Flycatcher" by Latham, upon which Gmelin 

 based his Muscicapa novehoracensis. Almost immediately after- 

 ward it was renamed by Bartram as Muscicapa cantatrix — a 

 term borrowed by Wilson, and which is commonly, though 

 wrongly, attributed to the latter writer. Wilson was familiar 

 with the bird, and with him appears to have originated the name 

 now current of "White-eyed", in allusion to the peculiar color 

 of the iris, by which single feature the species is distinguished 

 from any other treated in the present work. Wilson also calls 

 it the "Politician" by way of nickname, from the fact that it 

 is fond of newspapers — scraps of which are usually found 

 among the mass of odd materials that compose the nest. Au- 

 dubon adds that shreds of papery wasps' nests are also used ; 

 and Brewer enumerates "fragments of dry leaves, bits of de- 

 cayed wood and bark, coarse blades of grass, various vegetable 

 fibres, lichens, fragments of insects, mosses, straws, stems, &c." 

 Of whatever materials it may be constructed, the nest is always 

 built after the usual Vireonine style of architecture, being a 

 closely-matted cup swung pensile from a forked twig, nearly 

 hemispherical in contour, and rather large in proportion to the 

 size of the bird, as seems to be the rule with nests that are 

 built on or even near the ground, in comparison Avith those 

 placed at great elevations. Various authors have noted, since 

 Wilson, that this nest is one of the regular receptacles of Cow- 

 birds' eggs, and that the White-eye makes a faithful foster- 

 parent of the obnoxious parasite. The Vireo's own eggs are 

 not to be distinguished with certainty from those of other 

 species of this genus, being, like them, pure white, speckled 

 chiefly about the larger end with dark dots of purplish and 

 reddish-brown. Though the bird is less in linear dimensions 

 than most of its relatives of the Vireosylvia group, it is rather 

 portly in shape, and its eggs consequently do not yield in size 

 to those of some of the larger species, being rather over three- 

 fourths of an inch in length, by nearly or quite three-fifths in 

 breadth ; the usual number is five. In places where the White- 

 eyes are numerous, as they are, for example, about Washing- 

 ton, these nests are among those we may most frequently brush 

 against in threading our way through the thickets, and they 

 are usually placed so low that one may look into them when 

 standing on the ground. The tangled ravines along the course 



