KENTUCKY WARBLER. 
197 
The Tennessee Warbler is four inches and three quarters long, and 
eight inches in extent ; the back, rump and tail coverts, are of a rich 
yellow olive ; lesser wings coverts the same ; wings deep dusky, edged 
broadly with yellow olive ; tail forked, olive, relieved with dusky ; 
cheeks and upper part of the head inclining to light bluish, and tinged 
with olive ; line from the nostrils over the eye pale yellow, fading into 
white ; throat and breast pale cream color ; belly and vent white ; legs 
purplish brown ; bill pointed and thicker at the base than those of the 
Sylvia genus generally are ; upper mandible dark dusky, lower some- 
what paler ; eye hazel. 
The female differs little, in the color of her plumage, from the male ; 
the yellow line over the eye is more obscure, and the olive not of so rich 
a tint. 
Species XXV. SYLVIA FORMOSA. 
KENTUCKY WARBLER. 
[Plate XXV. Fig. 3.] 
This new and beautiful species inhabits the country whose name it 
bears. It is also found generally in all the intermediate tracts between * 
Nashville and New Orleans, and below that as far as the Balize, or mouths 
of the Mississippi, where I heard it several times, twittering among the 
high rank grass and low bushes of those solitary and desolate looking 
morasses. In Kentucky and Tennessee it is particularly numerous, 
frequenting low damp woods, and builds its nest in the middle of a thick 
tuft of rank grass, sometimes in the fork of a low bush, and sometimes 
on the ground ; in all of which situations I have found it. The mate- 
rials are loose dry grass, mixed Avith the light pith of weeds, and lined 
with hair. The female lays four, and sometimes six eggs, pure white, 
sprinkled with specks of reddish. I observed her sitting early in May. 
This species is seldom seen among the high branches ; but loves to 
frequent low bushes and cane swamps, and is an active sprightly bird. 
Its notes are loud, and in threes, resembling tweedle, tweedle, tweedle. 
It appears in Kentucky from the south about the middle of April ; and 
leaves the territory of New Orleans on the approach of cold weather ; 
at least I was assured that it does not remain there during the winter. 
It appeared to me to be a restless, fighting species ; almost always 
engaged in pursuing some of its fellows ; though this might have been 
occasioned by its numbers, and the particular season of spring, when 
love and jealousy rage with violence in the breasts of the feathered 
