50 CLASS AVtS. 



• 

 day, recommences some time before the setting of the sun, and 



continxies one or two hours after. 



This bird is very common in the marshes near the city of 

 New York. It visits them in the month of May, and quits 

 them on the approach of autumn. As if in compensation for 

 its disagreeable song, nature has endowed this bird with a 

 rare industry, in making a shelter for its young, against 

 every inclemency of the atmosphere. It attaches its nest to 

 several stalks of reeds, and always above the highest waters. 

 The attachments are so solid, that the most violent winds can- 

 not remove them. The form of the nest is that of an elon- 

 gated melon. Stalks of plants, small roots, and dried leaves, 

 are at its exterior. All these materials are intermingled with 

 mud, forming a sort of wall, which the water cannot pene- 

 trate, when it is dried by the sun. The inside of this cradle 

 is furnished with feathers, cattle-hair, and other softer ma- 

 terials. The entry is on one side towards the middle, and is 

 surmounted by a little roof, which advancing a little over it, 

 prevents the rain from coming in. The eggs are five or six 

 in number, very small, and of a deep pewter-colour. 



M. Vieillot has enumerated some other species under the 

 genus Throythorus, which other naturalists, with greater pro- 

 priety, have placed under different divisions of the dentiros- 

 tral family. 



We now come to the division of the Wagtails. 



Linnaeus comprised, under the denomination of 3fotacilla, 

 a great number of birds with slender beaks, which have sub- 

 sequently been divided into many genera. Bechstein has 

 restrained the name to the wagtails proper, and budytes, 

 which have more elevated limbs, and a longer tail than the 

 rest, which they are continually lowering and raising. To 

 such the name is more suitable than to any of the others. 

 These birds have, moreover, as distinctive marks, certain sca- 

 pulary feathers, which, extending to the end of the wing, give 

 them some relation with the majority of the grallse, and a tail 



