go GRASSHOPPER-WARBLER. 
is not improbable that it may often be overlooked. In Italy it is 
said to be rare ; but in the south of Spain I found it fairly abundant 
in autumn and winter; and in the latter season it appears to visit 
Morocco and Algeria. Eastward, it can be traced in Europe to 
Transylvania, and the south-east of Russia; perhaps to the Altai, in 
Siberia; but beyond the Ural Mountains its line is crossed by 
allied species:—Z. lanceolata in Siberia, and JL. straminea in 
Turkestan. 
The nest may be looked for in clumps of dry fen-grass, the 
bottoms and sides of thick hedge-rows, rank herbage on hill-sides, 
or in young plantations. When flushed from her nest the bird 
flies off with a very peculiar drooping movement of her outspread 
tail, and, if not pursued, she will usually not fly far. On her 
return she will sometimes come stealing back again with the 
mouse-like action so often insisted upon as a characteristic, but 
neither Mr. A. H. Evans nor I have noticed this performance on 
her leaving the nest. This, a compact and rather deep structure, 
is principally composed of moss and dry grass, with a finer lining 
of the latter; the 5-7 eggs are pale pinkish-white, freckled and 
zoned with darker reddish-brown: measurements ‘7 by ‘54 in. 
Two broods are sometimes reared in the season ; the first eggs being 
laid about the third week in May ; while they have been taken fresh 
in the first week of August. The song, already described, may be 
heard to advantage on a still summer’s evening, or during the two or 
three hours after dawn ; the bird perching on the topmost spray of 
a bush or the point of a tall reed to utter it, but taking refuge in the 
herbage on the smallest alarm, although perhaps only for a moment. 
The alarm-note is a sharp tc, téc, tac. The food consists of dragon- 
flles—taken on the wing—and other insects, with their larve. This 
species appears to migrate in large parties, for Booth observed several 
hundreds at daybreak early in May, all congregated on a small patch 
of some dozen or twenty acres of mud-banks covered with marsh- 
samphire and other weeds, near Rye in Sussex, and evidently making 
their way inland. 
The adult is greenish-brown above, with darker striations down the 
centre of each feather ; quills and tail brown, with faint bars on the 
latter ; under parts pale brown, with darker spots on the neck and 
breast ; under tail-coverts very long, and streaked along the shafts 
with dark brown ; bill brown ; legs and feet pale yellowish-brown. 
Length 5-4 in.; wing to tip of 3rd and longest quill 2:4 in. The 
sexes are alike in plumage. The young are more suffused with buff 
on the under parts, and have larger bastard primaries. 
