118 
HERMIT THRUSH. 
Along the Atlantic coast in New Jersey they remain longer and 
later, as I have observed them there late in November. In the 
cane swamps of the Chactaw nation they were frequent in the 
month of May, on the twelfth of which I examined one of their 
nests on a horizontal branch immediately over the path. The 
female was sitting, and left it with great reluctance, so that I had 
nearly laid my hand on her before she flew. The nest was 
fixed on the upper part of the body of the branch, and construct- 
ed with great neatness; but without mud or plaster, contrary to 
the custom of the Wood Thrush. The outside was composed 
of a considerable quantity of coarse rooty grass, intermixed 
with horse hair, and lined with a fine green coloured, thread-like 
grass, perfectly dry, laid circularly with particular neatness. 
The eggs were four, of a pale greenish blue, marked with specks 
and blotches of olive, particularly at the great end. I also ob- 
served this bird on the banks of the Cumberland river in April. 
Its food consists chiefly of berries, of which these low swamps 
furnish a perpetual abundance, such as those of the holly, myr- 
tle, gall bush, (a species of vaccinium,) yapon shrub, and many 
others. 
A superficial observer would instantly pronounce this to be 
^ only a variety of the Wood Thrush; but taking into considera- 
tion's difierenceof size, colour, manners, want of song, secluded 
habits, differently formed nest, and spotted eggs, all unlike those 
of the former, with which it never associates, it is impossible 
not to conclude it to be a distinct and separate species, however 
near it may approach to that of the former. Its food, and the 
country it inhabits for half the year being the same, neither 
could have produced those differences; and we must believe it to 
be now, what it ever has and ever will be, a distinct connecting 
link in the great chain of this part of animated nature; all the 
sublime reasoning of certain theoretical closet philosophers to 
the contrary notwithstanding. 
Length of the Hermit Thrush seven inches, extent ten inches 
and a half; upper parts plain deep olive brown, lower dull white; 
upper part of the breast and throat dull cream colour, deepest 
