BLACK AND YELLOW WARBLER. ]91 



kindsof bugs. The nest, according to Mr. Abbot, is suspended from 

 the horizontal fork of a branch, and formed outwardly of slips of grape- 

 vine bark, rotten wood, and caterpillars' webs, with sometimes pieces 

 of hornets' nests interwoven ; and is lined with dry pine leaves, and fine 

 roots of plants. The eggs are four, white, with a few dark brown spots 

 at the great end. 



These birds, associating in flocks of twenty or thirty individuals, are 

 found in the depth of the pine Barrens ; and are easily known by their 

 manner of rising from the ground and alighting on the body of the 

 tree. They also often glean among the topmost boughs of the pine 

 trees, hanging, head downwards, like the titmouse. 



Species XIX. SYLVIA MAGNOLIA* 



BLACK AND YELLOW WARBLER. 



[Plate XXIII. Fig. 2, Bale.] 



This bird I first met with on the banks of the Little Miami, near its 

 junction with the Ohio. I afterwards found it among the magnolias, 

 not far from Fort Adams on the Mississippi. These two, both of which 

 happened to be males, are all the individuals I have ever shot of this 

 species ; from which I am justified in concluding it to be a very scarce 

 bird in the United States. Mr. Peale, however, has the merit of having 

 been the first to discover this elegant species, which he "informs me he 

 found several years ago not many miles from Philadelphia. No notice 

 has ever been taken of this bird by any European naturalist whose 

 works I have examined. Its notes, or rather chirpings, struck me as 

 very peculiar and characteristic ; but have no claim to the title of song. 

 It kept constantly among the higher branches, and was very active and 

 restless. 



Length five inches, extent seven inches and a half; front, lores, and 

 behind the ear, black ; over the eye a fine line of white, and another 

 small touch of the same immediately under ; back nearly all black ; 

 shoulders thinly streaked with olive; rump yellow; tail coverts jet 

 black ; inner vanes of the lateral tail feathers white to within half an 

 inch of the tip where they are black ; two middle ones wholly black ; 



* MniaciUa maculosa, Gmrl. Syst. i., p. 984. — Syleiamamlnsa, L.^th. Ind. Orn. it., 

 p. 5.3fi. — ViEiLLOT, Ois.de I' Am. Sepi.\t\.9^. — Ficedula pensi/lvanica nctcia. Brihs. 

 ni., p. 502, 56. — Xe Figmer d fSte ceiidr4c, Buff, v., p. 291. — Yellow-rumped FUj- 

 catchcr, Edw. Glean, pi. 2!j!).— ydlow-rumpcd Warbler, Penn. Arct. Zool. n., 288. 

 —Lath. Syn. iv., p. 481, 104. 



