The Scottish Naturalist. 295 



Passenger Pigeon of America, as described by Col. Ross King.* 

 He says, " While quartered at Fort Rattlesnake, an old frontier 

 post near Niagara, I beheld the air filled and the sun obscured 

 by millions of pigeons, not hovering about, but darting onward 

 in a straight line with arrowy flight, in a vast mass a mile or more 

 in breadth, and stretching before and behind as far as the eye 

 •could reach. The duration of this flight being about fourteen 

 hours, viz., from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m., the column (allowing a pro- 

 bable velocity of 60 miles an hour, as assumed by Mr. Wilson), 

 could not have been less than 300 miles in length, with an 

 average breadth, as before stated, of a mile." Is it possible, I 

 would ask, for such vast multitudes to live if their existence de- 

 pended upon the extermination of rapacious birds? The question 

 answers itself, and in direct opposition to the extermination 

 theory, for here we have myriads of birds, good for food, living 

 amidst numerous rapacious birds of many species. Turn again 

 to " An Old Bushman/'f and we find (as related by him), game 

 birds of many species living where rapacious birds are seen in 

 vast numbers. See also India, China, and Japan, where phea- 

 sants and other game birds abound, where one can easily kill 

 thirty or forty head of game in an hour or two's ramble, — these, 

 be it observed, not mere British battue-birds, which would al- 

 most as readily perch on the muzzle of your gun as fly away, 

 but really wild birds, hatched and reared in the bush, where 

 rapacious birds fly in hundreds. Now, in looking to the history 

 of our own island, in former times w r e find that animals now 

 supposed to be incompatible with the preservation of game 

 were very numerous, and also that game of all kinds were in 

 even greater abundance than at the present time. In short, 

 everywhere we turn, and every way we view this subject, if done 

 impartially, only one conclusion can be arrived at, viz., that our 

 rapacious animals, one and all, should be under strict protection, 

 owing to the immense good they do mankind. Well may every 

 lover of nature long for a return of the old time — 



When the hen-harrier and kite in numbers were seen, 

 Circling high, wheeling low, over the heights of Culbleen ; 

 And the eagle majestic scoured the country afar, 

 From his high eyrie secure upon " dark Loch-na-gar ;" 

 When on Morven's bare summit sat the peregrine free, 

 And the brown buzzard flew lightly round rough Bennachie ; 



* Sportsman and Naturalist in Canada. 

 + Spring and Autumn in Lapland. 



