148 Field and Forest Rambles. 



forests have taken to the neighbourhood of towns, and perhaps 

 in the not far distant future, when the climate becomes 

 modified by the destruction of forest tracts, certain birds 

 now uncommon will become plentiful, whilst on the other 

 hand indigenous species, dependent on evergreen trees 

 for subsistence, will decrease or go elsewhere. The Nash- 

 ville warbler, Sylvia ruficapilla (Wilson), presents a strange 

 geographical distribution, being seemingly rare everywhere; 

 but, according to Reinhardt, the little creature is met 

 with as far north as Greenland in summer. On the au- 

 thority of Mr. Boardman, I include in the list the warbler 

 Sylvia protonotarius, by no means common north of the 

 Ohio River, and partial, more or less, to the sub-tropical 

 portions of the continent and West Indies. The following, 

 moreover, are common with us, and breed and migrate to the 

 West Indies, viz., the black and white Creeper, the blue 

 Yellow Back, the Maryland Yellow Throat, the Black- 

 throated and Yellow-rumped Warblers, the Chestnut-sided, 

 the Blackburn's, the Blackpoll, the Black and Yellow Cape 

 May, and the Yellow Redpoll Warbler. According to Mr. 

 Baird, * all our thrushes frequent the West Indies in 

 winter. Indeed Cuba seems to furnish no less than sixty 

 species of its winter visitors which breed here, including 

 ten rapacious birds. He accounts for the comparative 

 superiority of numbers in Cuba by the probability that 

 it lies in the route by which most species of the Eastern 

 provinces reach middle America in winter. This high 

 authority on the ornithology of North America has fur- 

 ther stated in his admirable and highly suggestive paper, 

 to which I am often referring, that whilst many of the 

 birds of the eastern regions content themselves with the 

 Gulf of Florida and its land latitudes in winter, and pass 

 in small numbers even further southwards, few, perhaps 



* "On the Distribution and Migrations of North American Birds," 

 Am. Journ. of Science, vol. xli. (1866), p. J 8. 



