DARTFORD WARBLER. 
147 
branches of the brake, they conceal themselves in 
the thickest part on the least alarm, and creep 
about from bush to bush.”* These are all habits 
resembling those of the common and lesser White- 
throats. On the Continent, again, they are said 
to frequent the cabbage gardens, where they will, 
no doubt, find abundance of food ; but it will be 
so different, and the locality altogether is so 
much at variance with that frequented in Britain, 
that we can scarcely account for it. 
The nest is placed a little way from the ground 
among the whins, and is described by Montague 
as “ composed of dry vegetable stalks, parti- 
cularly goose grass, mixed with tender dead 
branches of furze. These are put together in a 
very loose manner, intermixed very sparingly 
with wool. The lining is equally sparing, for it 
consists only of a few dry stalks of some fine 
species of carex.”f Mr Yarrell has also given us 
a pretty woodcut of one procured last year, which 
generally agrees with the description above given ; 
it is of the loose and careless structure we have 
alluded to, as characterizing the architecture of 
the genus curruca. The eggs are grayish green, 
speckled over with olive brown. 
Upper parts of the body clove brown, on the 
•wings and tail assuming a very deep shade ; 
cheeks and auriculars gray ; the throat, back, 
breast, and flanks, brownish purple red, becoming 
paler on the vent, and shading to grayish clove 
* Gould’s Birds of Europe, 
t Montague’s Ornithological Dictionary. 
