THE OOLOGIST. 



91 



probably a Crested Flj^catcher. This 

 bird was seated upon a limb beside a 

 nest the size of a foot ball and hanging 

 pendent like a great pear. Where had 

 he seen such a nest before? It was in 

 Johnson's Natural History but the 

 birds were called weavers and were said 

 to inhabit Africa. Was he on the verge 

 of a great ornithological discovery? 

 Could it be possible he was about to 

 add a new genus to the North American 

 Avifauna? The tree was small, his 

 elation unbounded and he was soon on 

 a level with the nest. Here he made 

 a great discovery that nearly deprived 

 him of breath— it was made entirely of 

 paper. Quickly working out the limb 

 he looked it over but could find no 

 opening and eagerly tore a hole in the 

 side. Whoop! Eureka! H ! It- 

 was a hornet's nest. 



J. Claire Wood. 



Warblers. 



On looking over Short's "Birds of 

 Western New York," I notice that he 

 does not mention the Black and 

 White Warblers as breeding, also Red- 

 breasted Nutchatch. 



Last June I was lucky enough to 

 find both species breeding here. On 

 the 5th of the month, I found a nest of 

 Black and White Warbler containing 

 four young a few days old and an addl- 

 ed egg. On the 7th, C. F. Stone, Ver- 

 di Burtch and myself went lo the "Big 

 Gullie," (a local name of a large 

 gullie about a quarter of a mile from 

 where I live,) in search of Canadian 

 and Magnolia Warblers nests. Mr. 

 Stone was in luck from start to finish. 

 He took 2 or 3 sets of Magnolia, a set 

 of Yellow-breasted Chat and a set of 

 5 Sharp-Shinned-Hawk. 



About all that Mr. Burtch and I got 

 was a good soaking as it rained nearly 

 all day, but I saw a pair of Red-breast- 

 ed Nuthatches feeding their young, 

 and called Mr. Burtch 's attention to 



them. We only saw three young. 

 They had only been out of the nest a 

 short time for they could fly only a 

 short distance at a time. 



Up near the head of the gullie I 

 found another nest of Black and White 

 Warbler containing 5 young about a 

 week or ten days old. So I think the 

 time to get fresh sets would be the 

 latter part of May. 



I found a Canadian Warblers nest 

 containing 2 fresh eggs which I left 

 for a full complement, but on going 

 back 4 days latter I was disappointed 

 to find the nest contained only the 

 2 eggs with incubation commenced. 

 Clarence N. Davis, 

 Branchport, N. Y. 



Self-Explanatory. 



February 25, 1904. 

 Editor of Oologist: 



I would like to call attention to one 

 W. J. Wirt, Albion, N. Y., who has 

 been practicing fraud in the trading of 

 eggs. Two years ago I caught him 

 on spurious abnormal sets. He sent 

 me a runt set of Phoebe, and wrote 

 up a data for Wright's Fly -catcher 

 collected in Arizona, for this job he 

 got 2-2 Whip-poor-will. Later he sent 

 me the best job of all— a set of three 

 eggs of Robin (as he called it) with a 

 well marked runt. The ''marked runt" 

 is a normal specimen of Clay-colored 

 or Chipping Sparrow. This set he 

 claimed to have taken from a Robin's 

 nest, and when I accused him of fraud 

 he pretended to be awfully hurt and 

 sent me an affidavit which he wrote 

 himself and signed his wife's name to 

 and also a party named Robert Short 

 as "eye witnesses" to the collection. 

 He got more bumps from me and 

 finally he said he was going out of 

 the egg business altogether and was 

 going into the farming and stock 

 raising business. 



