VIREOS. 163 



this modest vocalist. Not born ' to waste its sweetness on the 

 desert air,' the Warbling Vireo forsakes the depths of the wood- 

 land for the park and orchard and shady street, where it glides 

 through the foliage of the tallest trees, the unseen messenger 

 of rest and peace to the busy, dusty haunts of men." 



E. PHILADELPHICUS. (Brotherly-love Vireo.) Phila- 

 delphia Vireo.* 



a. This Vireo, if a distinct species, differs from Vireo gil- 

 vus (Z)) in a doubtful technicality only. Dr. Coues pronounces 

 it " almost indistinguishable from gilvus, except by absence of 

 spurious quill," and says that the colors of the latter species 

 are " precisely " the same.f Is it not doubtful if one feather 

 among hundreds (though, perhaps, an important one) can 

 characterize a bird as more than a variety ? 



b. d. I suppose that the nest, eggs, and song of this 

 bird are essentially the same as those of the Warbling Vireo.f 



c. The Philadelphia Vireo is probably a migrant through 

 Massachusetts, having been obtained at Philadelphia, also in 

 Maine, and at Moose Factory (to the southward of Hudson 

 Bay and James Bay). I have never seen it here, so far as 

 I know, nor have I seen any specimens shot here. I have 

 no observations to make upon its habits, which I suppose to 

 correspond closely to those of its immediate relations. Mr. 

 Brewster, in the "Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological 



* The Philadelphia Vireo has been of the Red-eye. A nest found by Mr. 



taken in southern New England only Ernest E. Thompson near Duck Moun- 



during the migrations, where it is ap- tain, Manitoba, June 9, 1884, " was 



parently one of the very rarest of our hung from a forked twig about eight 



migratory birds. It has been found in feet from the ground, in a willow which 



the breeding season at Franconia and was the reverse of dense, as it grew in 



Dixville Notch in New Hampshire ; the shade of a poplar grove. The nest 



and in the region about Lake Umbagog, was pensile, as usual with the genus, 



in western Maine, it is not uncommon formed of fine grass and birch bark, 



during the entire summer. W. B. The eggs were four in number, and 



t The two species are perfectly dis- presented no obvious difference from 



tinct, and their coloring is not " precise- those of the Red-eyed Vireo, but unf or- 



ly " the same, philadeiphicus having tunately they were destroyed by an ac- 



very much more yellowish on the un- cident before they were measured." 



der parts, especially in spring. W. B. (Auk, II, July, 1885, p. 306.) This nest 



J The song is wholly unlike the War- was positively identified by the cap- 



bling Vireo's, but closely similar to that ture of the female parent. W. B. 



