Brewer.] 268 [May 7, 
a town lying just west of Rutland, Vt. The first, found April 28th, — 
by a lad in Mr. Richardson’s employ, contained two eggs, one of 
which was taken. Three days later Mr. Richardson visited the nest, 
which was built in an old orchard of fruit trees, intermingled with a 
few maples and thorn bushes, and was situated just back of a farm- 
house. ‘The nest was placed on a horizontal branch of an apple tree, 
among three or four off-shoots from the limb, and was just nine feet 
eight inches from the ground. On his approaching their nest the 
birds flew about his head, making quite a distinct and peculiar snap- 
ping noise with their bills. Occasionally they alighted quite near 
him, fluttering their wings and repeating the same singular, snapping 
sounds. In all his experience, even with hawks, whose nests were 
being robbed, he had never before met with so resolute a resistance 
from any parent birds. ‘The nest had been found on the first of May, 
to contain three eggs, which were left, and on the 6th two more had 
been added, or six in the entire set. This time the nest and eggs 
were taken, and parent (¢) bird secured. The nest was composed ex- 
ternally of dry grasses and vegetable stalks, intermingled with .the 
blossoms of the Indian Tobacco and white feathers from the neighbor- 
ing poultry yard. There were also bits of wood and cotton and frag- 
ments of cotton twine. The inside of the nest was neatly lined with 
horse hair, nearly all of which was also white. It had an external 
diameter of seven inches at the top, a depth of three, and the cavity 
was two inches deep. 
The second Rutland nest was taken by another person, and in re- 
gard to this I have no notes. One of its five eggs is in my cabinet. 
The female parent of the first mentioned Rutland nest found another 
mate, with whom she re-appeared on the 8th of May, and the pair, 
very unwisely, built their new nest in the immediate. neighborhood of 
the first, and in a similar tree. On the 13th two eggs were found and 
taken, and it was ascertained that three others had been taken by 
some one else. Four of these eggs are also in my collection. Mr. 
Richardson regards the shrike as quite unusual in that region in the 
summer, while C. borealis is only found in the winter. 
Mr. Harry Merrill, of Bangor, Me., has laid me under great obliga- 
tions by the thorough manner in which he has investigated all the 
facts, so far as they could now be traced, of the occurrence of the 
Loggerhead in the neighborhood of that city. In a letter dated 
Jan. 27, 1879, he wrote me substantially that ‘‘ All the evidence is 
