This eloquent thrush is reddish brown or bright cinnamon above, brightest on the head; and white below, thickly ornamented with rounded black spots in lines from throat to thighs. It is the least shy of all the thrushes except the robin, yet gracefully modest in its demeanor. It constructs its nest on the low horizontal limb of some tree, always with the peculiarity that its foundation is a layer of old sear leaves and that black, thread-like rootlets are a favorite material for the walls. The eggs are unspotted blue, smaller and lighter than the greenish treasures in the mud-built cabin of the robin. Next in point of numbers, though not so often recognized, as the wood-thrush is the oliveback, which is distinctly olive in color on the back and flanks, and whose buffy underparts are unspotted save across the breast. This species is highly variable, so that those of the Pacific coast differ considerably from those of the Atlantic side of the continent. The same is true of the hermit-thrush, which is heard only in the more northern half of the continent in spring, when its rich, indescribable fluting perhaps deserves the prize of superiority over all other American bird-musicians. The veery, or Wilson's tawny thrush, is also noted for its song, which has an extraordinary bell-like quality which excites first curiosity and then admiration. The group of birds to which the thrushes belong is a very large one, and includes many smaller and variously colored birds, among which are such familiar American friends as the brown thrasher and its many cousins of the Southwest; the saucy, mewing, catbird--a frequenter of every garden and blackberry thicket in the land; those busybodies the wrens, and many others. WRENS One would not at first glance connect the great long-tailed brown thrasher with the tiny garden-wren which stuffs a hole in one of the barn timbers or a crevice in a broken tree with a mass of twigs surrounding a soft little bed for the red-sprinkled eggs; but when you closely compare the shape of bill and feet, and their general form and manners, the resemblance becomes more plain. Then you are not surprised to find the rough nest and speckled eggs of the big thrasher and the tiny wren much alike, and to find a resemblance in their songs, much as they differ in loudness.