NATURAL HISTORY. 



minute Humming-bird, and on the other by that gorgeous Butterfly, Urania sloaneus an in- 

 teresting association. The Quit often utters a soft, sibilant note as it peeps about. 



" The nesfc of this bird is very frequently, perhaps usually, built in those low trees and 

 bushes from whose twigs depend the paper nests of the brown wasps, and in close contiguity 

 with them. The Grass Quits are said to manifest the same predilection ; it is a singular exercise 

 of instinct, almost of reason, for the object is doubtless the defence afforded by the presence of 

 the formidable insects, but upon what terms the league of amity is contracted between the neigh- 

 bours I am ignorant. 



" It is in the months of May, June, and July that the Creeper performs the business of incubation. 

 On the 4th of May I observed a Banana Quit with a bit of silk cotton in her beak, and on searching, 

 found a nest just commenced in a sage-bush (Lantana camara). The structure, though but a 

 skeleton, was evidently about to be a dome, and so far was constructed of silk cotton. Since then 

 I have seen several completed nests. One now before me is in the form of a globe, with a small 

 opening below the side. The walls are very thick, composed of dry grass, intermixed irregularly 

 with the down of asclepias. It appeared to have been forsaken, from my having paid it too much 

 attention. It was fixed between the twigs of a branch of a bauhinia, that projected over the high 

 road near Content, in St. Elizabeth's. Another, which I found at the end of June in a sage 

 bush, was of the same structure ; in this were two eggs, greenish-white, thickly but indefinitely 

 dashed with reddish at the larger end." 



THE THIED FAMILY OF THE FINCH-LIKE BIRDS. THE MNIOTILTID^E. 

 AMERICAN WARBLERS. 



The American "Warblers are similar in form and also in habits to the Warblers of the Old World, 

 but, as already stated, they have no "first" or "bastai-d" primary, as it is called, so that they must be 

 placed in quite a separate sub-order of the Perching Birds. They are of a more vivid coloration than 

 their more sober-plumaged Old World cousins, many of them having a beautiful admixture of yellow, 

 black, chestnut, and white in their plumage. Many of them are closely allied to some of the American 

 Creepers (Ccerebida;), but are distinguished by a shallow notch at the end of the tongue, instead of the 

 deeply-fissured tip which is the characteristic of members of the last-mentioned family.* Some of the 

 American Warblers are extremely rare, and appear to be local in their distribution ; they seem, how- 

 ever, to be nearly all migratory, many of them spreading over a wide extent of North America during 

 the summer, and taking up winter quarters in Central America, some even extending to South 

 America. 



THE SUMMER YELLOW BIRD (Lendroica cestira). 



Dr. Brewer writes : "The Summer Yellow Bird arrives in New England with great uniformity from 

 the 1st to the middle of May. Its coming is usually the harbinger of the opening summer and expand- 

 ing leaves. Unlike most of its family, it is confiding and familiar, easily encouraged, by attention to its 

 wants, to cultivate the society of man. It confidingly builds its nest in gardens, often in close vicinity 

 to dwellings., and in the midst of large villages and cities, among the shrubbery of frequented parks. This 

 Warbler, soon after its arrival, begins the construction of its nest. It is usually placed in low bushes, 

 three or four feet from the ground. Occasionally very different positions are chosen. Hedges of 

 buckthorn and hawthorn, barberry-bushes, and other low shrubs are the favourite places of resort. On 

 one occasion the nest was pla.ced some forty feet from the ground in the top of a horse-chestnut tree 

 overhanging the main street of a village. Such high positions are, however, not very common. The 

 nest is invariably fastened to several twigs with great firmness, and with remarkable neatness and skill. 

 A great variety of materials is employed in the construction of their nests, though not often in the same 

 nest, which is usiially quite homogeneous. The more common materials are the hempen fibres of 

 plants, fibrous strips of bark, slender steins of plants and leaves, and down of asclepias. Interwoven 

 with these, forming the inner materials, are the down from willow catkin, the woolly furze from fern- 

 stalks and the Eriophorum virginicum, and similar substances. These are lined with soft, fine grasses^ 

 hair, feathers, and other warm materials. Cotton, when procurable, is a favourite material, so also i& 



* Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway : "North American Birds," Vol. I., p. 177. 



