206 
ICTERUS PECORIS* 
requisite for tlie egg of the cow bunting, I think I can 
say almost positively, that it is a day or two less than 
the shortest of the above mentioned spaces. In this 
singular circumstance we see a striking provision of 
the Deity ; for, did this egg require a day or two more, 
instead of so much less, than those among which it has 
been dropt, the young it contained would in every 
instance inevitably perish ; and thus in a few years 
the whole species must become extinct. On the 
first appearance of the young cow bunting, the parent 
being frequently obliged to leave the nest to provide 
sustenance for the foundling, the business of incubation 
is thus necessarily interrupted ; the disposition to con- 
tinue it abates ; nature has now given a new direction 
to the zeal of the parent, and the remaining eggs, 
within a day or two at most, generally disappear. In 
some instances, indeed, they have been found on the 
ground near, or below, the nest ; but this is rarely the 
case. 
I have never known more than one egg of the cow 
bunting dropt in the same nest. This egg is some- 
what larger than that of the bluebird, thickly sprinkled 
with grains of pale brown on a dirty white ground. It 
is of a size proportionable to that of the bird. 
So extraordinary and unaccountable is this habit, 
that I have sometimes thought it might not be general 
among the whole of this species in every situation ; 
that the extreme heat of our summers, though suitable 
enough for their young, might be too much for the 
comfortable residence of the parents ,* that, therefore, 
in their way to the north, through our climate, they 
were induced to secure suitable places for their progeny ; 
and that in the regions where they more generally pass 
the summer, they might perhaps build nests for them- 
selves, and rear their own young, like every other 
species around them. On the other hand, when I 
consider that many of them tarry here so late as the 
middle of June, dropping their eggs, from time to time, 
into every convenient receptacle ; that in the States of 
Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Penn- 
