White dorsal streaks extending to the rump, which is conspicuously banded with brown, and somewhat spotted with whitish. Beneath, including lining of wings, light cinnamon-brown; throat and belly paler, almost white; sides and crissum very obsoletely barred with darker, and faintly spotted with whitish. Feathers of jugulum like sides, but with the color obscured by the paler edges. Tarsus, .65 long. _Hab._ Eastern Province of United States … _C. stellaris._ Streaks on back confined to interscapular region; rump and upper tail-coverts almost plain reddish-brown. Beneath much paler than in _stellaris_, without any appreciable indication of bars or spots on sides and crissum, or of the fulvous of the jugular feathers. Inside of wings snowy-white. Tarsus, .72 long. _Hab._ Mexico and Guatemala; Brazil? … _C. elegans._ The differences between these two varieties are just barely appreciable when specimens of the two, of corresponding seasons, are compared. Two Mexican examples (_elegans_) differ more from each other than one does from North American specimens; because one (a typical specimen received from Salvin) is in the worn, faded, midsummer plumage, and the other in the perfect autumnal dress. Besides the longer tarsi of these Mexican birds, their tails, and even their bills, are longer than seen in North American skins. But while these differences between the North American and Mexican birds are just appreciable, there is one from Brazil (51,017, Sr. Don Fred. Albuquerque) which is exactly intermediate between these two varieties in color, while in size it is even smaller than the North American ones, measuring as follows: wing, 1.60; tail, 1.60; culmen, .45, tarsus, .61. Even if recognizable as belonging to different varieties, these specimens are certainly all referable to one species. HABITS. The Short-billed Marsh Wren is very irregularly distributed throughout the United States, being found from Georgia to the British Provinces, and from the Atlantic to the Upper Missouri. It is nowhere abundant, and in many large portions of intervening territory has never been found. [Illustration: _Cistothorus palustris._] It is exclusively an inhabitant of low, fresh-water marshes, open swamps, and meadows, is never found on high ground, and is very shy and difficult of approach. It makes its first appearance in Massachusetts early in May, and leaves early in September. In winter it has been found in all the Gulf States, from Florida to Texas.