118 HERMIT THRUSH. 



Along the Atlantic coast in New Jersey they remain longer and 

 later, as I have observed them there late in November. In the 

 cane swamps of the Chactaw nation they were frequent in the 

 month of May, on the twelfth of which I examined one of their 

 nests on a horizontal branch immediately over the path. The 

 female was sitting, and left it with great reluctance, so that I had 

 nearly laid my hand on her before she flew. The nest was 

 fixed on the upper part of the body of the branch, and construct- 

 ed with great neatness; but without mud or plaster, contrary to 

 the custom of the Wood Thrush. The outside was composed 

 of a considerable quantity of coarse rooty grass, intermixed 

 with horse hair, and lined with a fine green coloured, thread-like 

 grass, perfectly dry, laid circularly with particular neatness. 

 The eggs were four, of a pale greenish blue, marked with specks 

 and blotches of olive, particularly at the great end. I also ob- 

 served this bird on the banks of the Cumberland river in April. 

 Its food consists chiefly of berries, of which these low swamps 

 furnish a perpetual abundance, such as those of the holly, myr- 

 tle, gall bush, (a species of vaccinium,) yapon shrub, and many 

 others. 



A superficial observer would instantly pronounce this to be 

 only a variety of the Wood Thrush; but taking into considera- 

 tion its difference of size, colour, manners, want of song, secluded 

 habits, differently formed nest, and spotted eggs, all unlike those 

 of the former, with which it never associates, it is impossible 

 not to conclude it to be a distinct and separate species, however 

 near it may approach to that of the former. Its food, and the 

 country it inhabits for half the year being the same, neither 

 could have produced those differences; and we must believe it to 

 be now, what it ever has and ever will be, a distinct connecting 

 link in the great chain of this part of animated nature; all the 

 sublime reasoning of certain theoretical closet philosophers to 

 the contrary notwithstanding. 



Length of the Hermit Thrush seven inches, extent ten inches 

 and a half; upper parts plain deep olive brown, lower dull white; 

 upper part of the breast and throat dull cream colour, deepest 



