376 THE FE-\TIIERED TRIBES. 



certain lights. The legs and toes are red, the claws palo gray, strong, sharp, and 

 semicircular. 



" This beautiful bird," says Mr. Selby, " has brilliant red eyes. Its feet are something 

 like the parrots, and it climbs in the same way as that breed. It is very difficult to find; 

 for although a flock is marked into a tree, j^et its colour is so similar to the leaf of the 

 banyan — on the small red fig of which it feeds — that if a bird does not move, you may 

 look for many minutes before you can see one, although there are fifty in the tree." 



THE MAGNIFICENT PIGEON. 



The rich assemblage of colours exhibited in this bird induced M. Temminck, its first 

 describer, to give it the ajDiiropriatc name of magnificent. It is a native of the eastern 

 parts of Australia, a country whose productions present so much of what is new and 

 interesting in every department of zoology. It is said to feed chiefly upon the fruit of 

 one of the palms, in that country called the cabbage-tree, from the culinary use made 

 of the top, or embryo leaves. In size it equals, or rather surpasses, the common ring 

 pigeon, the tail being longer in proportion. The bill, which is rather slender, has the 

 soft or membranous part of a brownish orange ; the horny top, which is yellowish-white, 

 is slightly arched, but hard and compressed ; the nostrils are open, and their covering 

 but little swollen, and not projecting to the same extent as in the common pigeon ; the 

 forehead, as in other members of this restricted genus, is low and flat, and some of 

 the feathers cover a considerable portion of the soft part of the bill. The head, the 

 cheeks, and the upper part of the neck, are of a fine pale bluish-gray, which passes into 

 pale green towards the lower part of the neck and back. The upper parts of the body 

 are of a rich golden-green, assuming various shades of intensity as viewed in different 

 lights ; the wing-coverts are spotted with rich king's yellow, forming an oblique bar 

 across the wings. The quills and tail are of the richest shining green, changing in 

 effect with every motion of the bird. From the chin downwards proceeds a streak of the 

 finest auricula purple (the base of the feathers being of a deep sapphire green) ; this line 

 gradually expands as it descends and covers the whole breast and abdomen. The lower 

 belly, thighs, and under wing-coverts, arc of the richest king's j-ellow. The feet are 

 bluish-black, the tarsi short and clothed with j-ellow feathers half-way down their fronts 

 and sides ; the claws strong, much hooked, and formed for prehension. Nearly allied to 

 this species, if not a small variety of it, is the ('oliiiiiba uniaranUm of Lesson, which 

 inhabits the islands of New Zealand and New Guinea. . 



THE PASSENGER PIGEON.* 



Wilson's account of tliis remarkable bird is very grapliic and striking, and to it we shall 

 be indebted for om* present description. Its roosting-places are always in the woods, 

 which sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When these birds liavc frequented one 

 of those places for some time, the appearance it exliibits is surjjrising. The ground is 

 covered to the depth of several inches with their dimg ; all the tender grass and under- 

 wood are destroyed ; tlic surface is strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the 

 weight of the birds collecting one abo\c another ; and the trees themselves, for thousands 

 of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an axe. The marks of their desolation 

 remain for many years on the spot ; and numerous phiccs could be pointed out wlierc, for 

 s^ivcral years after, scarcely a single vegetable nuide its appearance. AMien these roosts 

 are first discovered, the inhabitants, from considerable distances, visit them in the night 

 with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of sulphui-, and various other engines of destruction. 



• C'lihiinba Migriitori 



