26 



THE ORNITHOLOGIST AND BOTANIST. 



We must not forget the Medeola (Medeola 

 virginica), a plant named for the fabulous sor- 

 ceress Medea, and usually classed with the tril- 

 liums in a genus by itself. It is a plant that 

 loves the wet places in the woods and grows 

 there in abundance. John Burroughs thus des- 

 cribes it in the " Century Magazine:" " It is a 

 pretty and decorative sort of a plant, with, when 

 perfect, two stages or platforms of leaves, one 

 above the other. You see a whorl of five or six 

 leaves, a foot or more from the ground, which 

 seems to bear a standard with another whorl of 

 three leaves at the top of it. The small, color- 

 less recurved flowers shoot out from above this 

 top whorl. The whole expression of the plant 

 is singularly slender and graceful. Sometimes, 

 probably the first year, it only attains to the first 

 circle of leaves. This is the platform from 

 which it will rear its flower column the next 

 year." When the flowers are in bloom, they are 

 deflexed beneath the leaves, but after the petals 

 have fallen the peduncles straighten out, lifting 

 the seed vessel, tipped with the three long styles, 

 into the sunlight to ripen. In August, a crim- 

 son flush creeps outward from the stem, nearly 

 to the centre of the top whorl of leaves. The 

 edible root is white and crisp, and tastes much 

 like cucumbers, fiom which the plant gets its 

 common name of Indian cucumber root. 



BEWICK'S WREN. 



(Tliryotliorus hetoickii-) 



BY JOHN B. LEWIS, EUBANKS, KV. 



This wren is quite common in south-eastern 

 Kentucky from the first of March to the last of 

 September, and is occasionally seen even in mid- 

 winter. As I write this, January 2nd, one is 

 hopping about in a honey-suckle in front of the 

 window, although the mercury is down to freez- 

 ing and occasional gusts of snow are falling. 



During the fall and winter they are shy and 

 silent, but with the first warm days of February 

 a few songs are generally heard. By the first 

 of March they are here in full force and sing 

 almost constantly. Like the Carolina wren, it 

 sings where ever it happens to be when the im- 

 pulse seizes it; from the comb of an out-build- 

 ing, on top of a fence post, in a fruit tree, or on 

 a stick of wood in the back yard. 



His song is much less powerful than that of 

 the Carolina, but it makes up in sweetness what 

 it lacks in strength and is sufficiently varied 

 never to become monotonous. The song is in 

 a rather high key and has a range in pitch of 

 about five tones. It invariably begins with a 

 short " klink," the call note, and ends with a 

 prolonged trill. The intervening portion con- 

 sists of from five to seven clear, distinct notes 

 in nearly or quite as many difl'erent pitches, 

 making the song more of a " tune " than is usual 

 in bird songs. Lik6 the indigo bird this wren 

 is an indefatiguable hot weather songster and 

 sings as frequently at mid-day as in the morning 

 or evening. 



The nesting habits are similar to those of the 

 common house wren. It builds a bulky nest of 

 sticks and straws which it generally places in 

 some niche or crevice about a building. Last 

 season a pair built in the seat of an old pair of 

 pants which formed part of a "scare crow " de- 

 signed to frighten hawks away from the poultry 

 yard. Another pair built in a canvass canoe 

 which had been stowed in an out-building with 

 one hatch left open. Still another pair built in 

 a fold of a grain sack which h ad been hung 

 across a beam in a neighbor's back porch. 



Bewickii is easily distinguished from any other 

 wren inhabiting this locality by its greater length 

 of tail, the tail being nearly as long as its body. 

 Its size is considerably smaller than that of the 

 Carolina wren and excepting its greater length 

 of tail is that of the common house wren. 



THE AMERICAN MERGANSER. 



[Merganser Americanus-) 



BY E. B. PECK, CLIFTON SPRINGS, N. Y. 



'J'his is one of our winter birds but always 

 quite rare and may be found on the outlet to 

 Canandaigua lake which runs about half a mile 

 north of here. 



On February 28, 1890, while out collecting a 

 series of prairie horned larks, I followed up 

 tbe outlet to a place where I knew there were 

 some larks, and while on a high bank I saw a 

 dark object glide into the water and dive. 

 Drawing back both hammers of my twelve-bore, 

 I waited for it to appear, which it did rather 



