TIIE YELLOW-POLL WOOD- WARBLER. 
in the season in Massachusetts. The eggs, four or five in number, measure 
eighths in length, by a trifle more than half an inch in breadth ; they are 
of a light, dull bluish-white, thickly sprinkled with dots and small markings 
of various sizes of dull reddish-brown, accumulated towards the great end.’ 7 
The fabric alluded to above may be thus described. A nest of the usual 
form had been constructed, of which the external diameter was three inches. 
It is composed of cotton rudely interwoven with flaxen fibres of plants, and 
lined with cotton of a reddish colour, with some hairs round the inner edges. 
The egg of the Cowbird having been deposited in this nest, another of a 
larger size, three inches and three-quarters in external diameter, has been 
built upon it, being formed of the same materials, but with less of the flaxen 
fibres. The egg is thus surmounted by a layer three-quarters of an inch 
thick, and was discovered by opening the lower nest from beneath. It is 
agglutinated to the lining of the nest, having been addled and probably burst. 
In this second nest a Cowbird had also deposited an egg, which was, in like 
manner, covered over by a third nest, composed of the same materials, and 
of nearly the same size as the second. 
The birds represented in the thirty-fifth plate of my large work, and dedi- 
cated to Mr. Children, I have since found to be the young of this bird, pro- 
bably of a late brood of the previous year, they having been found breeding 
at a period when this species shews few or none of the reddish spots on the 
breast, the want of which induced me to consider them as of a distinct 
species. These circumstances I mentioned to the Prince of Musignano, in 
London, my friend Dr. Bachman and myself having discovered the error 
soon after the publication of my first volume of Ornithological Biography. 
I made my drawing of this species near Natchez, and having killed the 
specimen while it was searching for insects among the flowers of a large 
climbing plant, I have figured part of the latter also. This plant I have 
never seen, excepting in low, damp or marshy places. It there runs over 
decayed trees, spreading in the form of a bower, and hanging in graceful 
festoons. The long pendulous clusters of pale purple flowers are destitute 
of odour. 
All our little birds known by the name of Warblers, and referred by 
authors to the genera Syluicola, Trichas, and Vermivora, present the same 
structure in their digestive and respiratory organs. Their oesophagus is 
rather narrow, without dilatation : the proventriculus bulbiform, with nume- 
rous oblong glandules ; the stomach rather small, oblique, elliptical or round- 
ish, with the lateral muscles distinct, but of moderate thickness, the lower 
muscle thin, the epithelium dense, reddish-brown, and longitudinally rugous 
when not filled ; the intestine rather short and of moderate width ; two very 
small coeca ; the rectum gradually enlarged. The trachea is composed of 
