MARSH-WREN. 
441 
cient height above the access of the highest tides. It is 
formed of wet rushes well intertwisted together, mix- 
ed with mud, and fashioned into the form of a cocoa 
nut, having a small orifice left in the side for entrance. 
The inside is lined with fine, soft grass, sometimes with 
feathers, and the outside, when hardened by the sun, 
resists all the injuries of the weather. The principal 
material of this nest, as in the preceding species, is, how- 
ever, according to Audubon, the leaves of the sedge-grass, 
on a tussuck of which it also occasionally rests. The eggs 
are commonly 6 to 8, of a dark fawn, or almost mahoga- 
ny color. The young quit the nest about the 20th of 
June, and they generally have a second brood in the 
course of the season. From the number of empty nests 
found in the vicinity of the residence of the Marsh 
Wren, it is pretty evident that it is also much employed 
in the usual superfluous or capricious labor of the genus. 
The pugnacious character of the males, indeed, forbids 
the possibility of so many nests being amicably occupied 
in the near neighbourhood in which they are commonly 
found. 
The Marsh-Wren is a little more than 4 \ inches long. The tail is 
short, rounded and barred with blackish ; the wings slightly barred ; 
the sides of the neck are mottled with touches of alight clay-color on 
a whitish ground ; the rump is also faintly spotted. The legs and 
feet are pale brownish yellow, and large for the size of the bird ; the 
tarsus is | of an inch ; the nails very long, slender, sharp, and arch- 
ed ; the hind one particularly long, and the toe itself stout, the mid- 
dle toe but slightly exceeds the lateral ones. The bill slender, and 
greatly curved ; the upper mandible dark brown, the lower testa- 
ceous, and paler brown towards the tip. Tongue sharp-pointed, at- 
tenuated, and entire. Iris hazel. 
