oe WipMmann, ome of Bachman’s Warbler. 309 
To a practiced ear this is a rich harvest, and there is probably 
no place where the rarer transients are So commonly met with and 
so often heard to sing as here in this wild gum-boot region of 
southeast Missouri, where the rivers have no banks, and a rise 
of a few feet inundates thousands of square miles. Every spring 
at least one half of the area is under water, but even the highest 
floods, among them that of 1897, cannot submerge the entire area, 
though it may lack only a few feet; so large is the expanse of 
lowland, over which the water has to spread. Kolb Island with 
its 140 acres had less than 4o acres of dry land at the time of my 
visit, though the water had already gone down over a foot and a 
half from its highest stage in April. 
The whole St. Francis basin is a network of sloughs, in reality 
only arms of the St. Francis River; they have very narrow chan- 
nels free from treegrowth, but overgrown with wild rice (Z7zanza 
miliacea), different kinds of smartweed, mostly the large southern 
kind, Polygonum densifiorum, and the channel itself is closed up in 
summer by a dense growth of lotus (Ve/umbium). This narrow, 
treeless, channel region merges into the tupelo and taxodium belt, 
the region of regular yearly overflow of several months’ duration, 
in some years hardly getting dry at all. 
Then comes the region of irregular overflow of shorter duration, 
grown with sweetgum, blackgum, water and willow oaks, ashes, 
cottonwood, hackberry and, on the higher levels, white and cow 
oaks, pin oak, red oak, walnuts and hickories, elms and two scores 
of others, among them the ornamental catalpa and tulip trees and, 
last but not least, the mulberry. From the ornithologist’s stand- 
point this latter is a valuable constituent of the sylva. Its fruit 
begins to ripen early in May and is a great attraction for a number 
of birds throughout the month. I am inclined to think that the 
mulberry has something to do with the melodious moods and late 
‘ loitering of many northbound wanderers, especially the Alice 
Thrushes, some of which were seen lingering into June. 
[Description of the nest and eggs of Bachman’s War- 
bler (Helminthophila bachmanit).—Mr.Widmann having requested 
me to describe the nest and eggs referred to in the preceding 
article I take pleasure in doing so. 
