ly able to fly. Their principal food is grass seeds, wild oats, and insects. They have no song; are distinguished by a single chip or cheep, uttered in a rather hoarser tone than that of the Song Sparrow; flirt the tail as they fly; seldom or never take to the trees, but skulk from one low bush or swampy thicket to another.

The Swamp Sparrow is five inches and a half long, and seven inches and a half in extent; the back of the neck and front are black; crown bright bay, bordered with black; a spot of yellowish white between the eye and nostril; sides of the neck and whole breast dark ash; chin white; a streak of black proceeds from the lower mandible, and another from the posterior angle of the eye; back black, slightly skirted with bay; greater coverts also black, edged with bay; wings and tail plain brown; belly and vent brownish white; bill dusky above, bluish below; eyes hazel; legs brown; claws strong and sharp for climbing the reeds. The female wants the bay on the crown, or has it indistinctly; over the eye is a line of dull white.

SEA-SIDE FINCH.

[Plate XXXIV.—Fig. 2.]

Or this bird I can find no description. It inhabits the low, rush-covered sea islands along our Atlantic coast, where I first found it; keeping almost continually within the boundaries of tide water, except when long and violent east or north-easterly storms, with high tides, compel it to seek the shore. On these occasions it courses along the margin, and among the holes and interstices of the weeds and sea-wrack, with a rapidity equalled only by the nimblest of our Sandpipers, and very much in their manner. At these times also it roosts on the ground, and runs about after dusk.

This species derives its whole subsistence from the sea. I examined a great number of individuals by dissection, and found their stomachs universally filled with fragments of shrimps, minute shell fish, and broken limbs of small sea crabs. Its flesh, also, as was to be expected, tasted of fish, or was what is usually termed sedgy. Amidst the recesses of these wet sea marches it seeks the rankest growth of grass, and sea weed, and climbs along the stalks of the rushes with as much dexterity as it runs along the ground, which is rather a singular circumstance, most of our climbers being rather awkward at running.

The Sea-side Finch is six inches and a quarter long, and eight and a quarter in extent; chin pure white, bordered on each side by a stripe of dark ash, proceeding from each base of the lower mandible, above that is another slight streak of white; from the nostril over the eye extends another streak which immediately over the lores is rich yellow, bordered above with white, and ending in yellow olive; crown brownish olive, divided laterally

by a stripe of slate blue, or fine light ash; breast ash, streaked with buff; belly white; vent buff-coloured, and streaked with black; upper parts of the back, wings and tail a yellowish brown olive; intermixed with very pale blue; greater and lesser coverts tipt with dull white; edge of the bend of the wing rich yellow; primaries edged with the same immediately below their coverts; tail cuneiform, olive brown, centered with black; bill dusky above, pale blue below, longer than is usual with Finches; legs and feet a pale bluish white; irides hazel. Male and female nearly alike in colour.

SHARP-TAILED FINCH.

[Plate XXXIV.-Fig. 3.]

Sharp-tailed Oriole, LATH. Gen. Syn. 11, p. 448, pl. XVII.— PEALE'S Museum, No. 6442.

A BIRD of this denomination is described by Turton, Syst. p. 562, but which by no means agrees with the present. This however, may be the fault of the describer, as it is said to be a bird of Georgia; unwilling, therefore, to multiply names unnecessarily, I have adopted his appellation. In some future part of the work I shall settle this matter with more precision.

This new (as I apprehend it) and beautiful species as an associate of the former, inhabits the same places, lives on the same food; and resembles it so much in manners, that but for their dissimilarity in some essential particulars, I would be disposed to consider them as the same in a different state of plumage. They are much less numerous than the preceding, and do not run with equal celerity.

The Sharp-tailed Finch is five inches and a quarter long, and seven inches and a quarter in extent; bill dusky; auriculars ash; from the bill over the eye, and also below it, run two broad stripes of brownish orange; chin whitish; breast pale buff, marked with small pointed spots of black; belly white; vent reddish buff; from the base of the upper mandible a broad stripe of pale ash runs along the crown and hind head, bordered on each side by one of blackish brown; back a yellowish brown olive, some of the feathers curiously edged with semicircles of white; sides under the wings buff, spotted with black; wing coverts and tertials black, broadly edged with light reddish buff; tail cuneiform, VOL. II.-Ii

short; all the feathers sharp pointed; legs a yellow clay colour; irides hazel.

I examined many of these birds, and found but little difference in the colour and markings of their plumage.

Since writing the above, I have become convinced that the bird described by Mr. Latham, under the name of Sharp-tailed Oriole, (Oriolus caudacutus), is the present species. Latham states, that his description and figure were taken from a specimen deposited in Mrs. Blackburn's collection, and that it came from New York.