According to Nuttall, this Wren has a lively and quaint song, delivered earnestly and as if in haste, and at short intervals, either from a tuft of sedge or from a low bush on the edge of a marsh. When approached, the song becomes harsher and more hurried, and rises into an angry and petulant cry. In the early part of the season the male is quite lively and musical. These Wrens spend their time chiefly in the long, rank grass of the swamps and meadows searching for insects, their favorite food. Their nest is constructed in the midst of a tussock of coarse high grass, the tops of which are ingeniously interwoven into a coarse and strong covering, spherical in shape and closed on every side, except one small aperture left for an entrance. The strong wiry grass of the tussock is also interwoven with finer materials, making the whole impervious to the weather. The inner nest is composed of grasses and finer sedges, and lined with soft, vegetable down. The eggs are nine in number, pure white, and rather small for the bird. They are exceedingly delicate and fragile, more so than is usual even in the eggs of Humming-Birds. They are of an oval shape, and measure .60 by .45 of an inch. Mr. Nuttall conjectured that occasionally two females occupied the same nest, and states that he has known the male bird to busy itself in constructing several nests, not more than one of which would be used. As these birds rear a second brood, it is probable that these nests are built from an instinctive desire to have a new one in readiness for the second brood. This peculiarity has been noticed in other Wrens, where the female sometimes takes possession of the new abode, lays and sits upon her second set of eggs before her first brood are ready to fly, which are left to the charge of her mate. Mr. Audubon found this Wren breeding in Texas. Dr. Trudeau met them on the marshes of the Delaware River, and their nest and eggs have been sent to us from the Koskonong marshes of Wisconsin. It has also been found in the marshes of Connecticut River, near Hartford; and in Illinois Mr. Kennicott found it among the long grasses bordering on the prairie sloughs. In Massachusetts I have occasionally met with their nests, but only late in July, when the rank grass of the low meadows has been cut. These were probably their second brood. The nest being built close to the ground, and made of the living grasses externally, they are not distinguishable from the unoccupied tussocks that surround them. Cistothorus palustris, BAIRD. LONG-BILLED MARSH WREN. Var. palustris.