332 “NOTES ON THE 
It is well known to bring out two broods, and sometimes 
three in the same season. 
The nest is composed mostly of dried grasses and fre- 
quently lined with horse hair. It is found usually in spring 
directly on the ground under some kind of shelter, perhaps a 
clod of earth, a bunch of grass, a bush or a root, yet may be 
in some exceptional place like a stump, in a hedge or even in 
a castaway old teakettle. One is said to have been found in 
the crown of an old ‘‘plug” hat hanging in a hazle brush. 
The general coloration of the eggs, I should say, is bluish- 
white, but they are almost unparalleled in their variability, and 
different eyes seem to see the same eggs ‘‘in a different light.” 
The markings are brown touched with lilac. Minnesota is 
probably about the western border of their fullest representa- 
tion. They are relatively abundant here and yet twenty-eight 
years ago I did not see more than one-tenth of the present 
numbers. Their food-habits make them a necessity to agri- 
culture, so they have come with or close upon the heels of the 
farmer and gardener. 
Owing to their disregard of a little snow and considerable 
frost, we find them almost simultaneously appearing in all the 
principal and more cultivated sections of the State. I have 
special reports of its appearance from the line adjoining lowa 
to Detroit lake, on the Northern Pacific. It lingers quite late 
in autumn, and even into early winter in the southwest portions 
of the State, in the dense thickets of the heavily timbered 
localities. 
Mr. Washburn found Song Sparrows at Dead lake at the 
head of Dead river, northwest of Otter Tail lake, in Otter 
Tail county, as late as October 13th, and expresses a very 
decided opinion, based upon local inquiries and observations, 
that this species remains much later. 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
General tint of upper parts rufous-brown, streaked with 
dark brown and ashy-gray; crown rufous, with a superciliary 
and median stripe of dull gray, the former lighter; anteriorly 
nearly white, with a faint shade of yellow; each feather of the 
crown with a narrow streak of dark brown; interscapulars 
dark brown in the center, then rufous, then grayish on the 
margin; rump grayer than upper tail coverts, and both with 
obsolete dark streaks; a whitish maxillary stripe, bordered 
above and below by one of dark rufous-brown, with a similiar 
one from behind the eye; under parts white; breast, sides of 
body and throat streaked with dark rufous, with a still darker 
