Adult Female. Plate CLIII. Fig. 2.
The Female is rather less, and wants the yellow spot on the crown, although the feathers there are tinged with that colour at the base. The upper parts are of light brownish-olive, streaked with dusky, the lower parts whitish, tinged with olive, and streaked with dusky; the yellow spots on the breast and rump paler, and tinged with green. Feet and legs blackish-brown.
Iris versicolor.
Iris versicolor, Willd. Sp. Pl. vol. i. p. 233. Pursh, Fl. Amer. Sept. vol. i. p. 29.—Triandria Monogynia, Linn. Irides, Juss.
Beardless; the stem round, flexuous, equal in height to the leaves, which are ensiform; the stigmas equalling the inner petals; capsules ovate, with their angles obtuse. This Iris is extremely common in all the swampy parts of the Southern States, and extends far up along the Mississippi. In many places I have seen beds of a quarter of an acre. It is cultivated here and there in gardens.
The Smilax represented grows abundantly in the same localities, climbing over any low bush so profusely as to cover it. The berries when ripe are eaten by many species of birds.
THE TENNESSEE WARBLER.
Sylvia peregrina, Wils.
PLATE CLIV. Male.
So very rare does this little bird seem to be in the United States, that in the course of all my rambles I never saw more than three individuals of the species. The first was procured near Bayou Sara, in the State of Louisiana, in the spring of 1821, when I drew it with the holly twig on which it was standing when I shot it. The second I obtained in Louisiana also, not many miles from the same spot, in the autumn of 1829, and the last at Key West, in May 1832. Of its migrations or place of breeding I know nothing.