The female sits upon her eggs fourteen days, and the young remain in the nest about ten days longer. They are supposed to have occasionally two broods in a season, as nests with eggs are found the last of July. They are said to arrive in Pennsylvania about the first of May, and to leave before the middle of September. According to Wilson they are easily raised from the nest, and become very tame and familiar. One that he kept through the winter, when two months old whistled with great clearness and vivacity. All the nests of this species that I have seen from Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, or Texas, have no lining, but are wholly made of one material, a flexible kind of reed or grass. The sociability of this species is one of its most marked characteristics. Audubon says that he has known no less than nine nests in the same enclosure, and all the birds living together in great harmony. A nest of this bird, taken in Berlin, Conn., by Mr. Brandigee, has a diameter and a height of four inches. Its cavity is three inches in depth, and varies from three to three and a half in diameter, being widest at the centre, or half-way between the top and the base. It is entirely homogeneous, having been elaborately and skilfully woven of long green blades of grass. The inside is lined with animal wool, bits of yarn, and intermingled with a wooly substance of entirely vegetable origin. It was built from the extremity of the branch of an apple-tree. An egg of this species, from Washington, measures .85 of an inch in length by .62 in breadth. The ground is a pale bluish-white, blotched with a pale purple, and dashed, at the larger end, with a few deep markings of dark purplish-brown. An egg from New Mexico is similar, but measures .79 of an inch by .54. Both are oblong oval, and pointed at one end. Icterus cucullatus, SWAINSON. HOODED ORIOLE. _Icterus cucullatus_, SWAINSON, Philos. Mag. I, 1827, 436.—LAWRENCE, Ann. N. Y. Lyc. V, May, 1851, 116 (first introduced into fauna of United States).—CASSIN, Ill. I, II, 1853, 42, pl. viii.—COOPER, Orn. Cal. 1, 1870, 275.—BAIRD, Birds N. Am. 1858, 546. _Pendulinus cucullatus_, BON. Consp. 1850, 433.—CASS. Pr. 1867, 60. SP. CHAR. Both mandibles much curved. Tail much graduated. Wings, a rather narrow band across the back, tail, and a patch starting as a narrow frontal band, involving the eyes, anterior half of cheek, chin, and throat, and ending as a rounded patch on the upper part of breast, black. Rest of body orange-yellow. Two bands on the wing and the edges of the quills white. _Female_ without the black patch of the throat; the upper parts generally yellowish-green, brown on the back, beneath yellowish. Length, 7.50; wing, 3.25.