296 VELLOW-THROATED VIREO. 
about in the far famed orange groves, and to investigate the hammock woods and 
palm groups of southern Florida. Meanwhile I could not remain inactive where I was. 
The air was extremely mild and delightful, filled with the fragrance of innumerable 
flowers. The trees were covered with fresh verdure, and a thousand-voiced chorus of 
Warblers passing northward to their summer home, resounded everywhere, and seemed 
to urge me to penetrate this to me unknown world; and I never regretted my 
stay at Chattahoochee. The forest is composed mostly of magnolias, sweet bays’, 
sweet gum trees, elms, oaks, and, on higher ground, of long-leaved pines. A dense 
growth of underwood, consisting of low, red flowering horse chestnut’, sparkle- 
berry, holly, different species of haw’, styrax‘, snow-drop® and anise trees*, I found 
everywhere. Some places were filled with pink flowering azaleas’. In the gardens the 
last camelias were shedding their bloom, and the first buds of the sweet and strongly 
scented gardenias (Cape jasmine) were opening. The woods all around were swarming 
with northward bound birds, of which one particular species surprised me by being 
represented in unusually large numbers. It was the YELLOW-THROATED VIREO, a bird 
which I heretofore had always observed during the spring migration in very limited 
numbers. The males uttered their peculiar notes so loud and continually as to rivet my 
attention. Especially the characteristic geery, geery, with which the lay always begins, 
was heard everywhere. As a rule these Vireos are silent during their spring migration,’ 
and I never heard them as I did in that place. This Vireo does apparently not breed 
in Florida, although it seems to be not uncommon in the upper distriéts of Georgia and 
in the mountains of South and North Carolina. It is distributed over the Eastern 
United States west to Kansas and Nebraska, north to Manitoba, south, in winter, 
through eastern Mexico to Costa Rica. Although it breeds throughout its United 
States range, it is very locally distributed. It is quite a common bird in Sheboygan 
County, Wis., where it breeds in apple and ornamental trees near dwellings, but I have 
seen only a few near Milwaukee and in northern Illinois. In south-western Missouri it 
is almost as abundant as the Red-eye. It there prefers the timbered lands near streams, 
where it hunts for insects among the foliage of the tree-tops, and I have never seen 
it in orchards and gardens. I have also observed it in south-eastern Texas, but not 
in the post oak region farther west. Col. N. S. Goss found it a rather abundant 
summer sojourner in eastern Kansas, where it inhabits the bottom woods; but as 
‘they are not wild and timid, will no doubt soon become accustomed to the presence 
of man, and readily make their homes about our prairie dwellings, as soon as the trees 
and shrubbery form inviting haunts; at any rate, they are much more common here 
than in former years.” (Goss.) Near St. Louis this Vireo is also frequently met with 
in the woods near creeks and streams. According to Mr. Robert Ridgway (“Ornithology 
of Illinois.” Vol. I, p. 186), it is a common bird in the woodlands of southern 
Illinois. ‘In some respects the Yellow-throated Vireo,” says Mr. Ridgway, “is the most 
remarkable of all the species of the family which occur within the United States. It is 
decidedly the finest songster of all those which reach the Northern States, has the loudest 
notes of admonition and reproof, arid is the handsomest in plumage. So far as the 
Magnolia glauca, 2 Aesculus Pavia. 8 Viburnum, 4 Styrax grandifolium, S Halesia tetraptera. & Illicium 
Floridanum, 7 Azalea nudiflora, 
