1038 WHITETHROAT - 
the whole plumage above is of a smoky-grey, while the bird in its 
movements is never obtrusive, and it rather shuns than courts 
observation, generally keeping among the thickest foliage, whence 
its rather monotonous song, uttered especially in sultry weather, 
may be continually heard without a glimpse of the vocalist being 
presented. The nests of each of these species are very pretty 
works of art, firmly built of bents or other plant-stalks, and usually 
lined with horsehair; but the sides and bottom are often so finely 
woven as to be like open basket-work, and the eggs, splashed, 
spotted or streaked with olive-brown, are frequently visible from 
beneath through the interstices of the fabric. This style of nest- 
building seems to be common to all the species of the genus Sylvia, 
as now restricted, and in many districts has obtained for the builders 
the name of “ Hay-Jack,” quite without reference to the kind of 
bird which puts the nests together, and thus is also applied to the 
BuLackcaP, 8. atricapilla, and the Garden-Warbler or PETTICHAPS. 
All these four birds, as a rule, leave Great Britain at the end of 
summer to winter in the south. Two other species, one certainly 
belonging to the same genus, S. orphea, and the other, S. nisoria, a 
somewhat aberrant form, have occurred two or three times in Great 
Britain. The rest, numbering perhaps a dozen, must be passed 
over. 
Nearly allied to Sylvia is Melizophilus, which consists of two 
species, one of them the curious Dartford Warbler of English 
writers, J/. undatus or provincialis. This is on many accounts a 
very interesting bird, for it is one of the few of its family that 
winter in England,—a fact the more remarkable when it is known 
to be migratory in most parts of the Continent. Its distribution 
in England is very local, and chiefly confined to the southern 
counties, where it has of late years become so scarce that its 
extermination seems probable. It is a pretty little dark-coloured 
bird, which here and there may be seen on furze-grown heaths 
from Kent to Cornwall. In spasmodic gesticulations the cock 
surpasses the Whitethroat; but these feats are almost confined to 
the pairing season, and at other times of the year the bird’s habits 
are retiring. For a species with wings so feebly formed it has a 
wide range, inhabiting nearly all the countries of the Mediterranean 
seaboard, from Palestine to the Strait of Gibraltar, and thence 
along the west coast of Europe to the English Channel ; but every- 
where else it seems to be very local. 
This may be the most convenient place for noticing the small 
group of Warblers belonging to the well-marked genus Hypolais, 
which, though in general appearance and certain habits resembling 
the Phylloscopi (| Willow] WrREN), would seem usually to have little 
to do with those birds, and to be rather allied to the Sylviine, 
if not to the Acrocephaline (WARBLER, page 1020). ‘They have a 
