I20 



ORNITHOLOGIST 



[Vol. 18-N0. 8 



stems of weeds, which are gathered when wet 

 and become solid and firm, and between 

 these are tracings of mud.'' 



Now, in all the years of my careful obser- 

 vations, I have never been able to find a sin- 

 gle nest of the Wood Thrush which contained 

 any mud except where small patches of it 

 had adhered to the decayed vegetation used 

 in its construction, seemingly more by acci- 

 dent than intention. My correction there- 

 fore is this, that the solid part of the Wood 

 Thrush's nest, usually called mud, is com- 

 posed of very old decayed vegetation and old 

 rotten wood pulp. I do not make these 

 statements to in any way injure Mr. Davie's 

 valuable works, for I priEe them highly, and I 

 think it would be proper here to state that 

 various other publications have made the 

 same mistake ; and if any ornithologist who 

 seems to differ with me on this subject will 

 carefully examine the nest of the Wood 

 Thrush, I feel sure that he will agree with me 

 that no mud is intentionally used in its con- 

 struction. James B. Piirdv- 



Plymouth, Michigan. 



Falcon Harbor, Bowdoin Bay, North 

 Greenland, Aug 13, 1893. 



Editor " O. & O." : I am writing up my 

 correspondence and will drop you a line to let 

 you know that we are here all right. I have 

 been off on a reindeer hunt all night with 

 good success. Mr. Davidson and I spent 

 twelve solid hours, the entire night in fact, 

 although we had daylight all the time, in 

 hunting the deer. We ran across some fif- 

 teen or more, but did not get them all by any 

 means. You should have seen us skirting 

 the edge of the ice-cap, climbing crags and 

 fording glacial rivers, clothes and all, with 

 our sealskin suits and rifles. I would like 

 the pleasure of showing you my fur clothing 

 and rifle, the latter a heavy 45 calibre Win- 

 chester repeater, the latest and finest make, 

 a gift from Lieut. Peary. I am very sure 

 that both you and Mr. Brown as well would 



have enjoyed the day»we put in at Duck Is- 

 lands, where we secured a great number of 

 birds and where I found several pairs of 

 birds nesting, despite the late date of our 

 visit. Previously I had been tramping and 

 collecting in Newfoundland, Labrador and 

 South Greenland, in fact, I shot the first 

 game of the expedition, having secured five 

 Black Guillemots and a Kittiwake Gull at 

 Holsteinburg. At Godham I secured a quan- 

 tity of Snow Buntings, one being in complete 

 winter costume, several Lapland Longspurs, a 

 fine pair of Guillemots, and four Ptarmigan, the 

 two latter sets forming material for two good 

 bird groups. A large quantity of birds and 

 eggs were also obtained of the Eskimo. 

 Here at Bowdoin Bay we have Snow Bunt- 

 ings in plenty, Ravens, Burgomasters, etc ; 

 last night on our reindeer trip we secured a 

 couple of young Eiders with our rifles, as my 

 repeating shot gun had, of course, been' left 

 behind at camp. A large quantity of King 

 Eiders were seen at LIpernavik. I would 

 like to send you a lot of natural history notes 

 and tell you something about this country, 

 the ice-cap, glaciers and icebergs — I was 

 in swimming within 100 yards of one this 

 afternoon — and many other things, but I 

 have not got the space nor the time. It is 

 quite likely that a couple of us will organize 

 an exploratory and collecting expedition soon 

 after our return to America ; we are studying 

 navigation to that effect, and in addition I 

 am making a study of practical meteorology. 

 I do not know whether I ever spoke to you 

 about Labrador or not, but it is a grand game 

 country ; at one place where I visited they 

 had killed 1 200 deer since Easter, at least 

 so I was informed by the Moravian mission- 

 aries. I must close now as I have got some 

 writing to do for Mr. Peary. You will, I 

 know, excuse this writing as I am writing out 

 of doors in a sealskin suit. I should be very 

 glad to receive a letter from you if you could 

 find time to write. George H. Clark, 



Naturalist to Lieut. Peary's Arctic 

 Expedition. 



