246 NOTES ON THE 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Head with a depressed crest; third quill longest, second and 
fourth little shorter; first a little longer than seventh, much 
shorter than sixth; tail decidedly rounded, or even graduated, 
the lateral feather about one-fourth of an inch shorter; upper 
parts dull greenish-olive, with the feathers of the crown, and 
to some extent of the back, showing their brown centres; upper 
tail coverts turning to pale, rusty-brown; small feathers at the 
base of the bill, ceres, sides of the head as high as the upper 
eyelid, sides of the neck, throat, and forepart of the breast, 
bluish ashy; the rest of the lower parts, including axillaries 
and lower wing coverts, bright sulphur-yellow; a pale ring 
around the eye; sides of the breast and body tinged with oliva- 
ceous; the wings brown, the first and second rows of coverts, 
with the secondary and tertial quills margined externally with 
dull-white, or on the latter slightly tinged with olivaceous yel- 
low; primaries margined externally for more than half their 
length from the base with ferruginous, great portion of the 
inner webs of all the quills very pale ferruginous; the two mid- 
dle tail feathers light brown, shafts paler; the rest have the 
outer web anda narrow line on the inner sides of the shaft 
brown. pale-olivaceous on the outer edge, the remainder ferru- 
ginous to the very tip; outer web of exterior feather dull 
brownish-yellow; feet black; bill dark brown above and at the 
tip below. paler towards the base. The female appears to have 
no brown on the inner webs of the quills along the shaft, -or 
else it is confined chiefly to the outer feathers. 
Length, &.75; wing, 4.25; tail, 4.10; tarsus, 0.85 of an inch. 
Habitat. eastern United States and Canada, west to the 
Plains. south through eastern Mexico to Costa Rica. 
Nore.—Since writing the foregoing I have had opportunity 
to observe this species more extensively, and I find them more 
uniformly distributed than I then anticipated. I have obtained 
the uniquely marked eggs within a mile of my residence. Their 
ground color is buff, of a rather exceptionally rich tone, over 
which is finely spattered ight-brown very uniformly, embracing 
both extremities. Over this again are scattered more sparsely 
coarser dottings of a darker shade of brown, quite thickly 
near the larger end, and at the smaller; after which over all, 
are longitudinal scratches, the finer of which are irregularly 
parallel, and heaviest from the bulge of the egg backward, but 
not quite to the end. The scratching varies in intensity and in 
the degree of regularity in different specimens. The nest is 
composed of coarse grass, weeds, twigs, roots, and is lined with 
finer grasses and ‘a few horse hairs. The eggs are laid the 
first week in June, generally, and occasionally a little earlier. 
