246 NOTES ON THE 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Head, with a depressed crest; third quill longest, second and 

 fourth little shorter; first a little longer than seventh, much 

 shorter than sixth; tail decidedly rounded, or even graduated, 

 the lateral feather about one-fourth of an inch shorter; upper 

 parts dull greenish-olive, with the feathers of the crown, and 

 to some extent of the back, showing their brown centres; upper 

 tail coverts turning to pale, rusty- brown; small feathers at the 

 base of the bill, ceres, sides of the head as high as the upper 

 eyelid, sides of the neck, throat, and forepart of the breast, 

 bluish ashy; the rest of the lower parts, including axillaries 

 and lower wing coverts, bright sulphur-yellow; a pale ring 

 around the eye; sides of the breast and body tinged with oliva- 

 ceous; the wings brown, the first and second rows of coverts, 

 with the secondary and tertial quills margined externally with 

 dull-white, or on the latter slightly tinged with olivaceous yel- 

 low; primaries margined externally for more than half their 

 length from the base with ferruginous, great portion of the 

 inner webs of all the quills very pale ferruginous; the two mid- 

 dle tail feathers light brown, shafts paler; the rest have the 

 outer web and a narrow line on the inner sides of the shaft 

 brown, pale-olivaceous on the outer edge, the remainder ferru- 

 ginous to the very tip; outer web of exterior feather dull 

 brownish-yellow; feet black; bill dark brown above and at the 

 tip below, paler towards the base. The female appears to have 

 no brown on the inner webs of the quills along the shaft, or 

 else it is confined chiefly to the outer feathers. 



Length, b.75; wing, 4.25; tail, 4.10; tarsus, 0.85 of an inch. 



Habitat, eastern United States and Canada, west to the 

 Plains, south through eastern Mexico to Costa Rica. 



Note. — Since writing the foregoing I have had opportunity 

 to observe this species more extensively, and I find them more 

 uniformly distributed than I then anticipated. I have obtained 

 the uniquely marked eggs within a mile of my residence. Their 

 ground color is buff, of a rather exceptionally rich tone, over 

 which is finely spattered light-brown very uniformly, embracing 

 both extremities. Over this again are scattered more sparsely 

 coarser dottings of a darker shade of brown, quite thickly 

 near the larger end, and at the smaller; after which over all, 

 are longitudinal scratches, the finer of which are irregularly 

 parallel, and heaviest from the bulge of the egg backward, but 

 not quite to the end. The scratching varies in intensity and in 

 the degree of regularity in different specimens. The nest is 

 composed of coarse grass, weeds, twigs, roots, and is lined with 

 finer grasses and a few horse hairs. The eggs are laid the 

 first w^eek in June, generally, and occasionally a little earlier. 



