136 
SYLVIA PENSXLIS. 
March ; so that it probably retires to the West India 
islands, and perhaps Mexico, during winter. I also 
heard this bird among the rank reeds and rushes within 
a few miles of the mouth of the Mississippi. It has 
been sometimes seen in the neighbourhood of Phila- 
delphia, but rarely ; and, on such occasions, has all the 
mute timidity of a stranger at a distance from home. 
This species is five inches and a half long, and eight 
in extent ; forehead, cheeks, and chin, yellow, sur- 
rounded with a hood of black, that covers the crown, 
hind head, and part of the neck, and descends, rounding, 
over the breast ; all the rest of the lower parts are rich 
yellow ; upper parts of the wings, the tail, and back, 
yellow olive ; interior vanes, and tips of the wing and 
tail, dusky ; bill, black ; legs, flesh coloured ; inner w r ebs 
of the three exterior tail feathers, white for half their 
length from the tips ; the next, slightly touched with 
white ; the tail slightly forked, and exteriorly edged 
with rich yellow olive. 
The female has the throat and breast yellow, slightly 
tinged with blackish ; the black does not reach so far 
down the upper part of the neck, and is not of so deep 
a tint. In the other parts of her plumage she exactly 
resembles the male. I have found some females that 
had little or no black on the head or neck above ; but 
these I took to be young birds, not yet arrived at their 
full tints. 
106 . SYLVIA PENSILIS, LATH. — SYLVIA FLAVICOLLIS, WJLS. 
YELLOW-THROAT WARBLER. 
WILSON, PLATE XII. FIG. VI. 
The habits of this beautiful species are not consistent 
with the shape and construction of its bill ; the former 
would rank it with the titmouse, or with the creepers, 
the latter is decisively that of the warbler. The first 
opportunity I had of examining a living specimen of 
this bird, was in the southern parts of Georgia, in the 
month of February. Its notes, which were pretty loud 
