The Catbirds are devoted parents, sitting upon their eggs with great closeness, feeding the young with assiduity, and accompanying them with parental interest when they leave the nest, even long after they are able to provide for themselves. Intruders from whom danger is apprehended they will boldly attack, attempting to drive away snakes, cats, dogs, and sometimes even man. If these fail they resort to piteous cries and other manifestations of their great distress. Towards each other they are affectionate and devoted, mutually assisting in the construction of the nest; and as incubation progresses the female, who rarely leaves the nest, is supplied with food, and entertained from his exhaustless vocabulary of song, by her mate. When annoyed by an intruder the cry of the Catbird is loud, harsh, and unpleasant, and is supposed to resemble the outcry of a cat, and to this it owes its name. This note it reiterates at the approach of any object of its dislike or fear. The food of the Catbird is almost exclusively the larvæ of the larger insects. For these it searches both among the branches and the fallen leaves, as well as the furrows of newly ploughed fields and cultivated gardens. The benefit it thus confers upon the farmer and the horticulturist is very great, and can hardly be overestimated. The Catbird can with proper painstaking be raised from the nest, and when this is successfully accomplished they become perfectly domesticated, and are very amusing pets. They construct their nests on clusters of vines or low bushes, on the edges of small thickets, and in retired places, though almost always near cultivated ground. The usual materials of their nests are dry leaves for the base, slender strips of long dry bark, small twigs, herbaceous plants, fine roots, and finer stems. They are lined with fine dry grasses, and sedges. Their nests average 4 inches in height by 5 in diameter. The diameter and depth of the cavity are 3½ inches. The eggs are of a uniform deep bluish-green, and measure .97 in length and .69 of an inch in breadth. FAMILY CINCLIDÆ.—THE DIPPERS. On page 2 will be found the characteristics of this family, which need not be here repeated. There is only a single genus, _Cinclus_, with four American species, and several from Europe and Asia. GENUS CINCLUS, BECHSTEIN. _Hydrobata_, VIEILLOT, Analyse, 1816 (Ag.).—BAIRD, B. N. A. 229. _Cinclus_, BECHSTEIN, Gemein. Naturg. 1802. (Not of Moehring, 1752. Type _Sturnus cinclus_, L.)—SALVIN, Ibis, 1867, 109. (Monograph.) [Line drawing: _Cinclus mexicanus._ 8117]