348 THE PURRE. 



smoke, varying in form and appearance every instant, while it performs 

 its evolutions in air. As this cloud descends, and courses along the 

 shores of the ocean, with great rapidity, in a kind of waving serpen- 

 tine flight, alternately throwing its dark and white plumage to the eye, 

 it forms a very grand and interesting appearance. At such times the 

 gunners make prodigious slaughter among them ; while, as the showers 

 of their companions fall, the whole body often alight, or descend to the 

 surface with them, till the sportsman is completely satiated with de- 

 struction. On some of those occasions, while crowds of these victims 

 are fluttering along the sand, the small Pigeon Hawk, constrained by 

 necessity, ventures to make a sweep among the dead, in presence of the 

 proprietor, but as suddenly pays for his temerity with his life ! Such a 

 tyrant is man, when vested with power, and unrestrained by the dread 

 of responsibility ! 



The Purre is eight inches in length, and fifteen inches in extent ; the 

 bill is black, straight, or slightly bent downwards, about an inch and a 

 half long, very thick at the base, and tapering to a slender blunt point 

 at the extremity ; eye very small, iris dark hazel ; cheeks gray ; line 

 over the eye, belly and vent, .white ; back and scapulars of an ashy 

 brown, marked here and there with spots of black, bordered with bright 

 ferruginous ; sides of the rump white ; tail-coverts olive, centered with 

 black ; chin white ; neck below gray ; breast and sides thinly marked 

 with pale spots of dusky, in some pure white ; wings black, edged and 

 tipped with white ; two middle tail feathers dusky, the rest brown ash, 

 edged with white ; legs and feet black ; toes bordered with a very nar- 

 row scalloped membrane. The usual broad band of white crossing 

 the wing, forms a distinguishing characteristic of almost the whole 

 genus. 



On examining more than a hundred of these birds, they varied con- 

 siderably in the black and ferruginous spots on the back and scapulars ; 

 some were altogether plain, while others were thickly marked, particu- 

 larly on the scapulars, with a red rust color, centered with black. The 

 females were uniformly more plain than the males ; but many of the 

 latter, probably young birds, were destitute of the ferruginous spots. 

 On the twenty-fourth of May, the eggs in the females Avere about the 

 size of partridge shot. In what particular regions of the north these 

 birds breed, is altogether unknown. 



