SPECIES 25. SYLVM FORMOSA. 

 KENTUCKY WARBLER. 



[Plate XXV.Fig. 3.] 

 PEALK'S Museum, JVo. 7786. 



THIS new and beautiful species inhabits the country whose 

 name it bears. It is also found generally in all the intermediate 

 tracts between Nashville and New Orleans, and below that as 

 far as the Balize, or mouths of the Mississippi, where I heard it 

 several times, twittering among the high rank grass and low 

 bushes of those solitary and desolate looking morasses. In Ken- 

 tucky and Tennesee it is particularly numerous, frequenting 

 low damp woods, and builds its nest in the middle of a thick 

 tuft of rank grass, sometimes in the fork of a low bush, and 

 sometimes on the ground; in all of which situations I have found 

 it. The materials are loose dry grass, mixed with the light pith 

 of weeds, and lined with hair. The female lays four, and some- 

 times six eggs, pure white, sprinkled with specks of reddish. 

 I observed her sitting early in May. This species is seldom 

 seen among the high branches; but loves to frequent low bush- 

 es and cane swamps, and is an active sprightly bird. Its notes- 

 are loud, and in threes, resembling, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle. 

 It appears in Kentucky from the south about the middle of April; 

 and leaves the territory of New Orleans on the approach of cold 

 weather; at least I was assured that it does not remain there 

 during the winter. It appeared to me to be a restless, fighting 

 species; almost always engaged in pursuing some of its fellows; 

 though this might have been occasioned by its numbers, and 

 the particular season of spring, when love and jealousy rage with 

 violence in the breasts of the feathered tenants of the grove; who 



