THE IPSWICH SPARROW. 39 
days. It is a much more pretentious affair than that of the Savanna 
Sparrow, and has the effect of a nest built of hay and stubble, lined with 
paler, finer straw. There are two distinct parts, an outer shell of coarse 
materials that are disposed like a rim, and an inner cup of closely woven, 
slender grasses. The little basin first excavated by the birds is filled in at 
the sides and around the margin with dead weed stalks, various coarse 
grasses and sedges, bits of moss, or similar materials. These form a shell 
rising about an inch above the surface of the sand and straggling out over 
it for an inch or two. The shell is lined almost wholly with the finer 
bleached blades of an unidentifiable species of Carex, a few wiry horse- 
hairs, or tufts from the shaggy ponies or cattle, being sometimes added. 
The lining is circularly disposed, and smoothed down as only a bird can 
do it, leaving between the eggs and the sand beneath an inch, more or 
less, of closely woven grass, while higher up the walls are considerably 
thicker on account of the added outer shell. 
Until it was proved that no Savanna Sparrow bred on Sable Island, the 
‘Gray Birds’’ eggs collected in 1862 (before the species was discovered), 
and now in the National Museum, were open to doubt. I have in my 
possession a set of savanna that is absolutely indistinguishable in every 
particular from one of the sets of przmceps now before me. To misuse a 
term, I might say that the eggs intergrade; and we should naturally 
expect northern-breeding savanna to lay even larger eggs than those of 
this set. However, I now have before me five authentic sets of 
Ammodramus princeps, two with five eggs, and three with four, making 
twenty-two eggs in all, from which I derive the following measurements :— 
Average size, 21.6 mm. (.85 in.) X 15.5 mm. (.61 in.). 
Extremes of length, 23.1 mm. (.g1 in.) to 20.3 mm.(.8o in.). 
Extremes of diameter, 15.7 mm. (.62 in.) to 15.2 mm. (.60 in.). 
They average a little larger than the eggs of A. s. savanna, from which 
they are otherwise indistinguishable, and they resemble the eggs of several 
other Sparrows. The ground color is bluish or grayish white, often so 
washed with brown as to appear olive brown, and usually so splashed and 
sprinkled with different shades of umber and vandyke brown as almost to 
conceal the color of the shell. There are also purplish and grayish brown 
markings that are less apparent on most of the eggs than are the bolder 
blotches of the deeper browns that in the majority of cases aggregate about 
the larger end and form there aring. A good many of the eggs have besides 
a few irregular hair lines (as if done with a pen) of deep brown. The eggs 
of the same set will vary much in coloration, and several very brown and 
slightly spotted eggs may be associated with a bluish blotched egg that 
looks as if it belonged to some other set. The shape is usually ovate, but 
in one set the eggs are long and slender. 
