Ornithology of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. 307 
In the very heart of the city of Pictou, an intelligent and 
scientific naturalist, Mr. Dawson, showed me three nests of 
these birds, constructed, not merely near his house, but 
actually within the house itself, on beams in his woodshed. 
Similar facts came repeatedly to my notice. Our little Chip- 
ping Sparrow is hardly so confiding and familiar as is this 
bird throughout that whole section from Eastport to Pictou. 
TREE SPARROW (Zonotrichia monticola Gmel.) 
Mr. Audubon, speaking of a nest and eggs given him as 
belonging to this bird, says, *the eggs were of a uniform 
deep blue, so closely resembling those of the common Chip- 
ping Sparrow, that had they not been much larger, he might 
have concluded them to have been those of that bird.” In 
this there is evidently some misapprehension. The egg of 
the Tree Sparrow, in every instance where I have obtained ` 
it, is not larger, but smaller, than that of the Chipping Spar- 
TOW. Itis not uniform in color, but spotted and lined with 
dark brown. Its ground color is distinctly shaded with 
green, not with blue. Nor, if uniform in color, would it 
resemble the Chipping Sparrow's eggs. Both eggs are 
Spotted, but vary in their ground color. Nor does the nest 
he describes seem to correspond with that of the Tree Spar- 
TOW, but rather with that of the Purple Finch ; and, but that 
he speaks of the uniformity of the color, it might be supposed 
the nest and eggs he speaks of were in reality those of the 
latter bird, : 
l was struck with the singularly separate geographical 
distribution of these two Sparrows, so much alike in all 
other respects. The Chipping Sparrow is one of the most 
common birds in the northern portion of the United States ; 
but wherever it is found in the summer we never find the 
other, Proceeding north, beyond a certain point, all at 
once we miss this bird, and, almost at the moment we crost 
the line that it does not. pass, We find its congener, so 
