NEST AND EGGS OF THE EEDSTAET 345 



side, and the same in height. The material is chiefly fine and 

 soft, such as plaut-down and perfectly disintegrated vegetable 

 fibre, and the nests built of such substances are exquisitely 

 soft and homogeneous. There is usually, however, a consider- 

 able mixture of coarser fibrous material, such as bark-strips, 

 with a lining of fine grasses, rootlets, in some cases hair, in 

 others pine-needles. 



A rather curious nest, taken at Eacine, Wisconsin, by Dr. P. 

 E. Hoy, and now preserved in the National Museum, is attached 

 entirely to one side of an upright fork, and setting away from 

 the support altogether, excepting a small part of its circum- 

 ference, which reaches down into the crotch. Another remark- 

 able nest, taken in Massachusetts by Mr. George O. Welch, and 

 described by Dr. Brewer, is a reconstruction of one begun by 

 a pair of Summer Warblers, and either abandoned by the origin- 

 ators, or from which they had been driven away. The Eedstarts 

 built upon this basis, constructing a nest of their own. The 

 base was composed of the downy covering of the under side of 

 fern-leaves, with a few herbaceous stems and leaves; within 

 this was built an entirely distinct nest, composed of long slen- 

 der strips of bark, pine-needles, and grass-stems. In a third nest, 

 found by the same writer in Hingham, Mass., the more usual 

 bark-strips were replaced by hempen fibres, thistledown, bits 

 of newspaper, and other matters. This nest was in a tree stand- 

 ing in an open space near a. dwelling-house ; another was in a 

 swampy thicket, five feet from the ground ; one of the northern 

 nests Dr. Brewer notices was built in low willow-bushes. 



The Eedstart appears to lay usually only four eggs, this being 

 the number in most of the nests I have seen ; but five are often 

 found. The ground-color of the shell is white, and this is quite 

 thickly sprinkled over, but especially spotted at and around 

 the larger end, with usual shades of brown, lilac, and purplish. 

 They have been likened to those of the Summer Warbler, and 

 there is probably nothing about them, or the nest either, that 

 enables one to distinguish them with certainty from those of 

 some other Sylvicolines. My measurements of several speci- 

 mens at the Smithsonian give the range of variation in size from 

 0.60 X 0.49 to 0.70 x 0.51. Dr. Brewer's indicate rather smaller 

 samples ; he states that they vary in length from 0.55 to 0.68 

 of an inch, and in breadth from 0.45 to 0.53. Mr. Minot says 

 that the "four or five eggs of each set usually average .65 X -50 

 of an inch" — a statement that exactly bears out my mea- 

 surements, and is possibly deduced from them. 



