a 
318 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. / 
DESCRIPTION. 
Middle of back with thesfeathers dark-brown centrally, then rufous, and edged 
with pale-fulyous (sometimes with whitish). Hood and upper part of nape continu- 
ous chestnut; a line of the same from behind the eye; sides of head and neck ashy; 
a broad light superciliary band; beneath whitish, with a small circular blotch of 
brownish in the middle of the upper part of the breast; edges of tail feathers, pri- 
mary quills, and two bands across the tips of the secondaries, white; tertiaries nearly 
black; edged externally with rufous, turning to white near the tips; lower jaw yel- 
low; upper black. 
This species varies in the amount of whitish edging to the quills and tail. 
Length, six and twenty-five one-hundredths inches; wing, three inches. 
Hab. — Eastern North America to the Missouri; also on Pole Creek and Little 
Colerado River, New Mexico. 
This species occurs in New England only as a winter 
visitor. It arrives from the North about the last of October, 
and remains in swamps and sheltered thickets through the 
winter, and until the first week in May. While with us, it 
is gregarious, and often visits stubble-fields and gardens, 
where it feeds upon the seeds of grasses and various weeds. 
It has, at this season, a persistent twitter, which is uttered 
by all the members of the flock at short intervals. As it 
sometimes utters a sweet soft warble in the spring, it un- 
doubtedly possesses quite a song during the mating season. 
It is not impossible that this bird sometimes breeds in 
the most northern sections of these States; but there is no 
authenticated instance on record of its doing so. The bird. 
alluded to in the ‘“ Proceedings of the Boston Society of 
Natural History” (vol. V. p. 213) was undoubtedly the 
Chipping Sparrow. 
The Tree Sparrow breeds, according to Mr. Hutchins, 
around the Hudson’s Bay settlements. ‘Its nest is placed 
in the herbage, is formed externally of mud and dry 
grass, and lined with soft hair or down,— probably from 
plants, —in the manner of the Yellow-bird.” The eggs 
are about five in number: they are of a light grayish-blue 
color, and are marked with spots and blotches of two shades 
of brown and red. To compare them with another species, 
I would say that they almost exactly resemble small speci- 
mens of the eggs of the common Song Sparrow. They are 
