238 WORM-LATING WARBLER. 
part of the tree, making a great rustling, in search of its prey. I have 
often watched its manoeuvres while thus engaged, and flying from tree | 
to tree in search of such places. On dissection, I have uniformly 
found their stomachs filled with spiders or caterpillars, or both. Its 
note is a feeble chirp, rarely uttered. 
The Worm-Eater is five inches and a quarter in length, and eight 
inches in extent; back, tail, and wings, a fine clear olive;‘tips and 
inner vanes of the wing-quills, a dusky brown; tail, slightly forked, 
yet the exterior feathers are somewhat shorter than the middle ones ; 
head and whole lower parts, a dirty buff; the former marked with four 
streaks of black, one passing from each nostril, broadening as it de- 
scends the hind head; and one from the posterior angle of each eye; 
the bill is stout, straight, pretty thick at the base, roundish, and taper- 
ing to a fine point; no bristles at the side of the mouth; tongue, thin, 
and lacerated at the tip; the breast is most strongly tinged with the 
orange buff; vent, waved with dusky olive; bill, blackish above, flesh- 
colored below; legs and feet, a pale clay color; eye, dark hazel. The 
female differs very little in color from the male. 
On this species Mr. Pennant makes the following remarks : —“ Does 
not appear in Pennsylvania till July, in its passage northward. Does 
not return the same way, but is supposed to go beyond the mountains 
which lie to the west. his seems to be the case with all the transient 
vernal visitants of Pennsylvania.”* That a small bird should permit 
the whole spring, and half of the summer, to pass away before it 
thought of “passing to the north to breed,” is a circumstance, one 
should think, would have excited the suspicion of so discerning a 
naturalist as the author of rctic-Zoology, as to its truth. I do not 
know that this bird breeds to the northward of the United States. As 
to their returning home by “the country beyond the mountains,” this 
must, doubtless, be for the purpose of finishing the education of their. 
striplings here, as is done in Enrope, by making the grand tour. This, 
by the by, would be a much more convenient retrograde route for the 
Ducks and Geese; as, like the Kentuckians, they could take advantage 
of the current of the Ohio and Mississippi, to float down to the south- 
ward. Unfortunately, however, for this pretty theory, all our vernal: 
visitants, with which I am acquainted, are contented to plod home by 
the same regions through which they advanced, not even excepting 
the Geese. : 
* Arctic Zoology, p. 406. 
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