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good little boy and Toni Sawyer. I want to come out and “ spread

myself.”


Fife for once has taken a leaf out of my childhood’s Story

Books. Everything has ended happily, and a great content has

come to a deserving person—to wit, myself.


The following lines, which I came across the other day, so

well describe the song of the Cat-bird, that I make no excuse for

quoting them here.


A Cat-bird sat on a mulberry spray,


And told his tale to the night:


He had nothing to tell, but he told it so well,


That the moon she was filled with delight.


She listened all night, and she listened all day,


To the mystic charm, which I might as well say,


Was nothing on earth but a Too-ral-a.


Such a ravishing, rollicking, mellowy strain,


It was half of it gladness, and half of it pain,


Till it seemed she could listen for ever and aye,


To his pretty little too-ral-oo-ral-a.



THE WHITE-CROWNED PIGEON.


Columba leucocephala.


By D. Seth-Smith, F.Z.S.


The subject of this paper inhabits the Greater and Eesser

Antilles, Floridor Keys, Honduras, Cozumel Island and the

Bahamas. Mr. Bouhote met with it during his recent expedition

to the Bahamas, and, at my request, has most kindly supplied

me with the following notes ; he writes :—


“ The White-crowned Pigeon is, in the Bahamas, essentially a sea-

loving bird, breeding sparingly everywhere, but mostly on very small

islands lying some five to ten, or even twenty miles from the larger islands.

On some of these small islands they nest in thousands, generally rather

late in the year — about June, and in August shooting parties are organised

against them. When nesting away from the mainland there are two great

flights morning and evening, when the birds go and return from their

feeding places on the mainland. They are very shy, and inhabit the

thickest bush, where they are difficult to see and shoot. The nest is

the usual flimsy structure of twigs, and is generally placed about three or

four feet from the ground near the tops of the bushes, and the eggs in no

way differ from those of the other Columbidce. These birds are not often

met with during the winter in the Bahamas, whether because they retire to

the thickest bush, or because they are migratory I am not prepared to say.”


The White-crowned Pigeon, although common enough in



