24 GRAMINIVOR-E. 



the aquatic plants for them, and when the supply fails it quits 

 the country. The bird under consideration is a genuine 

 bunting, resident, like the other short-clawed buntings, among 

 tall herbage, the seeds of which it eats, and hence it is found 

 only where there are graminivorous plants ; while the warbler, 

 which merely lodges in the herbage, but does not feed on 

 any part of it, is found among all tall aquatic plants indis- 

 criminately, though most among ridges and reeds, as these 

 form the thickest matting in the shallows and margins of 

 the waters. 



The bunting is considerably the larger bird of the two, 

 nearly the same size as the yellow bunt nig, and at least 

 double the weight of the sedge warbler. The bunting's nest 

 is seldom placed in the reeds ; but generally near, though 

 sometimes at a considerable distance, in a tuft or under a low 

 bush ; and when it is among the reeds, it is placed where 

 they form a dry tuft or other support, and never suspended to 

 them by a basket-work of leaves like that of the warbler. 

 The eggs of the bunting are not quite so numerous; and they 

 are greyish white, with a tinge of pale pink, lined and dropped 

 with chocolate red, like the eggs of the other buntings ; and 

 those of the warbler are pale brown, mottled with darker, and 

 without any lines. Farther, the bunting is as tuneless as its 

 congeners ; and its note, such as it is, is given during the 

 day, and from a visible perch, while the warbler sings unseen, 

 seldom in the heat of the day, but rather, according to the 

 general habit of insectivorous birds, early in the morning and 

 late in the evening, and sometimes the whole night long, or 

 nearly so. 



It is probable that the buntings, and, indeed, all birds that 

 feed upon the farinaceous portions of seeds in the healthy 

 state, are guided to their food chiefly by sight. There is but 

 little scent in those seeds, and we do not know much about 

 the sense of smell in birds ; most of them appear to us to have 



