Letters, Announcements, tyc. 
395 
umber lines or dots, but has a few light-lilac dots scattered 
over the rest of its surface. They are of a rounded oval shape, 
and measure *70 by *58 of an inch. 
The nest was in a grove of pines bordering the river-bottom, 
and well concealed in the fork of a horizontal limb, and about 
eight feet from the ground. No description can do justice to 
the elaboration and artistic elegance of its construction. It 
is large for the bird, being 3^ inches high by 2f wide; and 
the hollow is 2 inches deep by 2J wide, the walls varying 
from \ to 1\ inch in thickness. The framework is beauti¬ 
fully wrought of fine vegetable stems and roots, into which 
are woven the feathers of various birds, those of the winter 
plumage of Lagopus leucurus being most conspicuous, and in 
strong contrast with the sooty feathers of the Calamospiza 
bicolor. 
Neither its eggs nor its nest have any resemblance to those 
of D. coronata, as one would naturally expect to see. Mr. 
Hepburn found a single nest built in the forked branches of 
a small shrub ; but he states that they generally frequent high 
trees and construct their nests in the upper branches. 
The bird is very abundant in Montana, in Washington Ter¬ 
ritory, and parts of Oregon; Dr. Cooper thinks they breed 
in the higher Sierra-Nevada, and, Dr. Coues also believes, as 
far south as the mountains of Arizona. 
In the absence of large blotches scattered over the egg 
generally, in the paleness of its marking, and in the general 
lightness of its coloring, this egg bears no resemblance to the 
egg of any other species of this genus that I have ever met 
with. 
I am yours &c., 
T. M. Brewer. 
Boston, U. S, 
April 27, 1877. 
Sir, —Mr. Yarrell, in his f British Birds 9 (1st ed.), writing 
of the Long-tailed Duck, says that in the male bird there are 
“ four window-like apertures ” at the bottom of the trachea • 
but in his vignettes five are represented (B. B. iii. p. 261); 
