496 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



some fine rootlets, sometimes lined with hair, like the chippy's, 

 sometimes with very fine grass tops ; it is placed in a crotch of 

 the bush or in a tuft of weeds ; the copses of scrubby willows I 

 found to be favorite nesting places, though any of the shrubbery 

 along the river bank seemed to answer ; on those occasions when 

 I approached a nest containing eggS, the female fluttered silently 

 and furtively away, without venturing a protest; the eggs I found 

 in one case to be deposited daily till the complement was filled ; 

 they measure 0"62 in length by 050 in breadth on an average ; 

 the ground-colour is light dull green, sparsely but distinctly 

 speckled with some rich and other darker shades of brown, these 

 markings being chiefly confined to the larger end, or wreathed 

 about it, though there are often a few specks here and there over 

 the rest of the surface; from the earliness of the first sets of eggs, 

 I suppose that two broods may be reared each season. {Coues.) 

 The spot chosen for their home is mostly in a low bush, iiot more 

 than a foot from the ground ; as exception to this rule I have 

 noted five nests on the ground and one or two at a height of three 

 feet; it is a very slight structure, a good deal like that of a chip- 

 prng sparrow, but composed entirely of grass ; when compared, 

 with other tree nests it is conspicuously flimsy and light-coloured, 

 the latter effect being due to the absence of the black fibrous 

 roots so commonly used as lining; the eggs are among the most 

 beautiful of any produced by the sparrows ; when first the discoverer 

 draws aside the bush and exposes the nest with its complement, 

 his.f eelings are as of finding an exquisite casket of jewels ; although 

 this is one of the most corrimon of our sparrows, and although on 

 the scrubby plain between the Duck Mountain and the Assiniboine 

 in early June, I could have found as many as four or five nests in 

 an hour's walk, the treasure-trove feeling in connection with the 

 eggs continues in full force. I infer from the above and other 

 observations that the shattuck bunting breeds twice, if not three 

 times each season with us; it leaves the "big plain " abouttheend 

 of September. {Thompson-Seton.) Builds in rose bushes,' snow- 

 berry and wolf-willows generally from one to two feet from the 

 ground ; in size it is about three inches in diameter, but the cavity 

 is less than two inches across. The nest is built of the stems of 

 finer grasses and quite an open structure lined inside with coarse 

 dark horse-hair, other nests were lined with white hair; in June, 

 i8g6, two nests were taken at Sewell, Manitoba, each contained 



