236 THE GENUS DENDRCECA 



the inner webs are yellow), never plain olivaceous. Crown never 

 with lateral black stripes, nor under parts uniformly streaked 

 with blackish on a pale ground, nor back with a yellow patch, nor 

 whole head yellow. Length usually 5 or 6 inches ; rarely under 

 and perhaps never over these dimensions. Nest in trees or 

 bushes, with rare exceptions. Eggs white, spotted. 



It is not easy to frame a definition of this genus covering all 

 its modifications, yet introducing no term inapplicable to any 

 species ; but the foregoing expressions considered collectively, 

 however arbitrary or trivial some of them may seem to be, 

 may serve to distinguish any Dendrceca from its allies of other 

 genera 5 and, if so, the diagnosis is exclusively pertinent to 

 group as conventionally accepted. The coloration of these 

 birds, though indeterminate in most respects, is nevertheless 

 a good clue to the genus ; for the tail of every Dendrceca is 

 blotched with white, excepting D. cestiva and its allies, in 

 which it is bright yellow on the inner webs; and though sev- 

 eral of the Worm-eating Warblers have white-blotched tails, 

 these birds are easily distinguished by the acute, un notched, 

 and scarcely or not bristled bill ; while the Creeping Warblers, 

 Mniotilta and Parula, with white-spotted tail-feathers, have 

 differently proportioned feet. No Dendrceca shows the special 

 color-pattern which Mniotilta, Parula, Protonotaria, Siurus, 

 Oporornis, and Oeothlypis respectively exhibit; nor does any 

 one of them present such a development of the rictal bristles 

 as that seen in the group of Fly-catching Warblers, where, 

 moreover, the bill is usually wider and more depressed at the 

 base than it is in Dendrceca. 



The names this genus has borne have been frequently 

 changed. The earlier-described species were usually called 

 Motacilla or Sylvia, the ineligibility of which names is too obvi- 

 ous to require comment. Next Sylvicola came into vogue; but 

 this, as instituted by Swainson, belongs more particularly to 

 the group afterward called Parula, and, in any event, is untena- 

 ble, being long antedated by Sylvicola in conchology. The 

 family name Sylvicolidce, however, is still generally derived from 

 this source, though Gray calls the family Mniotiltidce, after 

 Vieillotfs genus Mniotilla or Mniotilta, and Cooper has lately 

 named it Dendrcecidce. Gray, in 1842, proposed the term Den- 

 droica, Baird's adoption of which fixed it so firmly in our no- 

 menclature, that a generation of American ornithologists have 

 grown up who probably never think of using any other term. 

 As far as I can see into the devices of nomenclature, it should 



