April 1888.] 



AND OOLOGIST. 



55 



little cousins and brothers tli;it iinivcd by mail 

 today. I am siiiijiiscd to find myself such a 

 ready convert to the exchange system. 



Still, I know there are dangers in it, and 

 being an old fellow I take the liberty to i)reach 

 a little. Don't go in for numbers of specimens 

 merely. A family or genus well filled out, rep- 

 resenting a good series of plumages, and for- 

 eign as well as native members of the group, is 

 of more value to you and I and all of us, than a 

 heterogeneous mass of skins, which reprt sent 

 no well developed group or sequence. It is a 

 good plan, too, if the strictly local collection 

 ean be kept a little apart from the rest. My ar- 

 rangement is to place my own at the foot of 

 the drawer or tray, Eastern specimens to the 

 right. Northern above, and Western to tlie left 

 of these. Of course, there are many other 

 ways of doing the same thing, but this was the 

 first that suggested itself to me, ami it seems to 

 answer remarkably well. 



But the greatest danger of all |ierlia|is, is 

 that exchanging may coine to savor tuo miich of 

 mercantile att'airs. At this point, it is very 

 little more meritorious than the millinery busi- 

 ness. Xot that I mean to say that 1 consider 

 the latter an illegitimate occupation in any 

 sense. 



Invading a beautiful woody hillside and im- 

 prisoning its jolly little rivulet to turn a great 

 buzz-saw, must be looked upon as an act of 

 vandalism before the hard-working bird trader 

 is to be pilloried. But I am digressing. Another 

 thing we can learn by exchanging is to compare 

 our own work with th.at of others. We can 

 thus get points of benefit to ourselves, and 

 sometimes give our correspondents hints that 

 are of value to them. But there is a still 

 something more, and to me a sweeter pleasure 

 in looking over my exchanges. .Sonu» of us old 

 fellows have been quite erratic wanderers in our 

 younger days, and liere and there a little biiil 

 calls up old memories (jt by-gone days. 



Here is a little Black Poll Warbler, and as I 

 hold it up a little sideways in my hand, an al- 

 most forgotten picture comes back of the spot 

 where I first made bis acquaintance. The little 

 Hermit lakes skimmed over with ice, the curl- 

 ing sntoke of our camp fire rising through the 

 trees, and the blush of morning tinging the 

 steep walls of Tuckerman's I'avine. Tlu^ lan- 

 coln's Finch has a background of old pasture 

 lands, with big rocks sprinkled about and 

 patches of savin and huckleberry bushes. .\nd. 

 wandering in the distance, the silver thread 

 shows where the big broad river flows by the 

 first place I ever called home. 



Nesting of the Swamp Sparrow. 



nv isA.vc s. iiEii F. i'im,.vi>t;i,i'm.\, i'KNN. 



The .Swamp Sparrow (Melospiza palustris) is 

 the most plentiful species of the family found 

 in the eastern pari <if I'hiladelphia and Dela- 

 ware Counties, if we exclude the least useful 

 representative Passer (lomeMicns. It arrives in 

 this neighborhood about the last week in .\pril, 

 and is found in great luimbers on the low 

 meadow lands that bonier on tlie Delaware and 

 Schuylkill Itiver, where it makes its summer 

 home. 



Nest building begins about the twentieth of 

 May, and in some cases as early as the fifteenth 

 of that niontli. The nnraber of eggs found in a 

 nest varies from four tn five, aiul nioie often the 

 former than the latter number is found. The 

 collector who is not well accjuainted with the 

 liabits of this species would be somewhat sur- 

 prised, on entering a meadow during the breed- 

 ing season, to see a number of the.se birds, and 

 after tramping several hours through tall tan- 

 gled grass, mud, water and bunches of tus- 

 socks, upon counting up the result of his tire- 

 some hunt to find that the nests discovered will 

 not average more than one to every ten pairs of 

 birds seen. 



Some years ago before the lower portion of 

 Philadelphia was so thickly settled, and the 

 relentless small boy became so numerous, the 

 favored site for a nest was the centre of a large 

 tussock of grass, but now the greater number 

 of nests found are placed on the ground, or in a 

 bmich of sedge grass. When it is placed in 

 the latter, or in a tussock, it is composed en- 

 tirely of fine yellow grass stems, and is neat 

 and compactly built. When placed on the 

 ground, however, the outside is composed of 

 coarse plant stems, and the inside is thickly 

 lined with fine yellow grass, and it is much 

 larger than when in the former position. 



'I'his is the jolliest little sparrow that 1 have 

 ever met, and while the breeding season lasts it 

 seems as if he could not express his joy forci- 

 bly enougli to his partner. 



Willie the female is performing her laborious 

 duties, the male, (when not hunting for food) 

 will take his position on a weed stalk, or small 

 bush, and i)our forth his song; and in his ecstacy 

 he will rise in the air to the height of fifteen or 

 twenty feet, and then let himself slowly de- 

 scend to the ground, all the while keeping up 

 his song. I have counted as many as twelve 

 birds singing in the air at one time within a 

 radius of one hundred and fifty yards. 



