402 SYLVTTD.E. 



lurly goose grass, mixed with the tender dead branches of 

 furze, not sufficiently hardened to become prickly ; these 

 are put together in a very loose manner, and intermixed 

 very sparingly with wool. In one of the nests was a single 

 Partridge's feather. The lining is equally sparing, for it 

 consists only of a few dry stalks of some fine species of 

 Carex, without a single leaf of the plant, and only two or 

 three of the panicles. This thin flimsy structure, which 

 the eye pervades in all parts, much resembles the nest of 

 the "Whitethroat." 



Though the nest has since been repeatedly found in many 

 places, no writer has surpassed Montagu's account of the 

 bird's nidification, which is accordingly here quoted. But 

 the nest which he took seems to have been, as nests for the 

 second brood commonly are, less stoutly put together than 

 those built earlier in the season, and these, though com- 

 posed of similar materials, are much more compact and 

 rather resemble those of the Sedge-bird than of that to 

 which he likened his specimen. The eggs are somewhat 

 similar to those of a Whitethroat, but the colouring is less 

 suffused, and the markings bolder, being either of a deep 

 olive or of a reddish-brown * on a clear ground of french- 

 white or stone-colour. They measure from '72 to '64 by 

 from -52 to -49 in. 



Young males brought up from the nest, Montagu says, 

 "began to sing with the appearance of their first mature 

 feathers, and continued in song all the month of October, 

 frequently with scarcely any intermission for several hours 



* It may be remarked that the eggs of several species of Si/fviiihe and 

 Turdkhe shew a tendency to what is called "dimorphism." Thus a large series 

 of the eggs of the Dartford Warbler may be readily divided into two sets, one of 

 which inclines to olive, while in the other a reddish hue prevails. The olive 

 colour in birds' eggs often seems to be closely allied to blue — as witness the bluish 

 varieties occasionally laid by Nightingales, Pheasants, Plovers and Gulls. In the 

 Warblers this divergence is perhaps greatest in the eggs of the widely-spread 

 Oisticola schcenicola, and it has led to some serious disputes among those oologists 

 who have only had specimens of one character before them, and have not seen 

 the papers on the subject by Herr Keitel (Naumannia, 1858, p. 137) and 

 M. Lunel (Bulletin de la Socidt^ Ornithologique Suisse, 1865, p. 9), with their 

 accompanying plates. 



