After fattening on the fruits of May and early Juue they begin to turn their attention to the continuation of their species, and com mence about the 10th or 12th of the latter month building a nest large in proportion to the bird, sometimes in their favourite cedar treo (Juniperus Virginiana, Willd.), but more frequently in the orchards, generally choosing a forked or horizontal branch of an apple tree, some ten or twelve feet from the ground. Outwardly and at the bottom is laid a mass of coarse dry stalks of grass ; the inside is lined entirely with very fine stalks of the same material. Tho eggs are three or four, of a dingy bluish-white, thick at the great end, taper ing suddenly, and becoming very narrow at the other, marked with small rouudish spots of black of various sizes and shades ; and the great eud is of a pale dull purple tinge, marked likewise with touches of various shades of purple and black. About the last week in June the young are hatched, and are at first fed on insects and their larvae, but as they advance in growth on berries of various kinds.
Tho following is Nuttall's account of the manners of this bird in captivity : " A young bird from one of the nests described in the hemlock was thrown upon my protection, having been by some means ejected from his cradle. In this critical situation however he had been well fed or rather gorged with berries, and was merely scratched by the fall he had received. Fed on cherries and mulberries he was soon well fledged, while his mate in the nest was suffered to perish by the forget fulness of his natural protectors. Coeval with the growth of his wing-featheill were already seen the remarkable red waxen append ages, showing that their appearance indicates no particular age or sex ; many birds, in fact, being without these ornaments during their whole lives. I soon found my interesting prot4g6 impatient of the cage, and extremely voracious, gorging himself to the very mouth with the soft fruits on which he was often fed. The throat, in fact, like a craw admits of distension, and the contents are only gradually imaged off into the stomach. 1 now suffered the bird to fly at large, and for several days he descended from the trees in which ho perched to my arm for food ; but the moment ho was satisfied he avoided the cage, and appeared by his restlessness unable to survive the loos of liberty. lie now came aeldomer to me, and finally joined the lisping muster-cry of ' tee, tze, tx6,' and was enticed away after two or three attempts by his snore attractive and suitable associates. When young, nature provided him with a loud impatient voice, and kal-td-did ' (often also the clamorous cry of the young Baltimore) was his deafening and almost incessant call for food. Another young bird of the first brood, probably neglected, cried so loud and plaintively to a male Baltimore bred in the same tree, that be commenced feeding it. Mr. Winship of Brighton informs me that one of the young Cedar
Birds which frequented the front of his house in quest of lioneyauckle berries, at length on receiving food, probably also abandoned by his roving parents, threw himself wholly on his protection. At largo day and night, he still regularly attended the dessert of the dinner table for his portion of fruit, and remained steadfast in his attachment to Mr. Winship till killed by an accident, being unfortunately trodden under foot." are now, lying before me, each with largo and numerous clusters of eggs, and having the waxen appendages in full perfection. The young birds do not receive them until the second fall, when in moulting time they may be seen fully formed, as the feather is developed from its sheath. 1 have once or twice found a solitary one on the extremity of one of the tail-feathers. The eye is of a dark blood-colour ; the legs and claws black ; the inside of the mouth orange ; gape wide; and the gullet capable of such distension as often to contain twelve or fifteen cedar-berries, and serving as a kind of craw to prepare them for digestion. The chief difference in the plumage of the male and female consists in the dulness of the tints of the latter, the inferior appenr ance of the crest, and the narrowness of the yellow bar at the tip of the taiL" 13, phamicoptcra, the Asiatic Wax-Wing. The discovery of the Red Winged Chatterer, or Japanese Wax-Wing, is one of the fruits of Dr. Siebold's scientific mission to Japan by the government of the Nether lands. In size it bears a greater resemblance to the Cedar-Bird than to the Bohemian Wax-Wing, but differs from both iu the nakedness of the nostrils (which are not hidden by the small feathers of the front, like the nostrils of the other two species of this small but natural group), in the length of the crest, and the beautiful black plumes with which it is ornamented, and by the entire absence of the wax-like appendages that tip the secondaries of its congeners.
The length of the Japanese Wax-Wing is six inches and six lines. The base of the bill is bordered by a black band, which passes to the back of the head, surrounding the eye in its way, and terminates in the lower crest-feathers, which are of the same colour throughout ; the chin and throat are black ; the erect is long, composed above of feathers of an ashy-reddish colour with an inferior layer of the black plumes already alluded to ; the breast, upper parts, and wing-coverts are of a brownish-ash, and a rod band traverses the wing about the middle of it; all the quills are of an ashy-black, the greater quills terminated with black and tipped with white ; the tail is of an ashy black, tipped with vivid red ; the middle of the belly is of a whitish yellow ; and the lower tail-coverts chestnut ; shanks and feet black.