THE PEWEE FLYCATCHER. 223 



Bill broad and much depressed; second quill longest, third a little shorter, 

 first shorter than fourth; tail scarcely emarginate, upper parts dull greenish- 

 olive, the head darker; wings and tail dusky-brown; two bands of dull pale 

 yellow on the wing, the secondary quills broadly edged and tipped with the 

 same; a narrow ring of yellowish- white round the eye; throat greyish-white; 

 sides of neck and fore part of breast greyish-olive, the rest of the lower parts 

 yellowish-white. 



Male, 51, 81 



From Texas northward. Migratory. 



Sassafras. 



Laurus sassafras, Willd. Sp. PL, vol. ii. p. 485. Pursh, Fl. Amer. Sept., vol. i. p. 277. 

 — Enneandria Monogynia, Linn. Lauri, Juss. 



The Sassafras grows on almost- every kind of soil in the Southern and 

 Western States, where it is of common occurrence. Along the Atlantic 

 States it extends as far as New Hampshire, and still farther north in the 

 western country. The beauty of its foliage and its medicinal properties ren- 

 der it one of our most interesting trees. It attains a height of fifty or sixty 

 feet, with a proportionate diameter. The leaves are alternate, petiolate, oval, 

 and undivided, or three-lobed. The flowers, which appear before the leaves, 

 are of a greenish-yellow colour, and the berries are of an oval form and 

 bluish-black tint, supported on cups of a bright red, having long filiform pe- 

 duncles.. 



THE PEWEE FLYCATCHER. 



^-Muscicapa fusca, Gmel. 



PLATE LXIIL— Male and Female. 



Connected with the biography of this bird are so many incidents relative 

 to my own, that could I with propriety deviate from my proposed method, 

 the present number would contain less of the habits of birds than of those of 

 the youthful days of an American woodsman. While young, I had a planta- 

 tion that lay on the sloping declivities of the Perkiomen Creek. I was ex- 

 tremely fond of rambling along its rocky banks, for it would have been diffi- 

 cult to do so either without meeting with a sweet flower, spreading open its 



