19G SIXTH REPORT — 183C. 



that poultry thrive best in our cliauitcs when their coops are 

 artificially lieatcd in winter. The tetrannidce are comparatively 

 inliabitiiiits of cold countries, and the ptarmigans, which are the 

 most northern of all, are almost the only migratory ones. Most 

 of these birds quit the bleak arctic barren lands in which they 

 are bred, and retire in winter to the verge of the woods, return- 

 ing, however, very early in spring to their former haunts, or as 

 soon as the decreasing snow has released the tops of the dwarf 

 birches and willows on which they feed, and the crests of a few 

 gravelly banks. The passenger pigeon migrates northwards to 

 the 62nd parallel, after its breeding season in the United States 

 has terminated ; through stress of weather individuals have 

 been driven very far north, an instance beirig recorded by 

 Sir John Ross, of the capture of one on the coast of Greenland. 

 This pigeon visits Carolina in the winter at long and uncertain 

 intervals, its arrival being determined, according to the Reve- 

 rend Mr. Bachman, not by the severity of the season, but by the 

 scarcity of food to the north : when beech mast is plentiful in 

 Canada, it remains there in immense multitudes all the winter. 



The grallatores are directly opposed to the rasores in being 

 the most migratory order of birds. The scolopaciike and seve- 

 ral species of the other families breed in high latitudes, yet they 

 winter within the tropics. In their migrations through the fur 

 countries they pursue different routes in the spring and fall : thus 

 at the time of the noi-thern movement, the lateness of the summer 

 on the coast of Hudson's Bay, and the quantity of ice which 

 hangs on its shores till late in the year, exclude from that quarter 

 the barges, snipes, and curlews which therefore pass by the inte- 

 rior prairies, where the melting snow has rendered the soil soft 

 and spungy. In autumn again the prairies having been ex- 

 posed to the action of a hot and generally very dry sunnner, are 

 comparatively arid, but the late thaws on the coast flood the 

 neighbouring flats even in August and September, and it is there 

 accordingly that the soft-billed waders pass a month or six 

 ■weeks on their way from their arctic breeding stations to 

 the moiht intertropical lands. The marshes and sand-banks in the 

 estuaries of Hay, Nelson, Severn, and Moose i-ivers are resorted 

 to in the fall of the year by immense flocks of strand birds. 

 The following herons are stated by the Reverend Mr. Bachman 

 to breed in Carolina, ardea herodias, hidcwicifuia, cundidissima, 

 rufescens, ccerulea, vb-esceiis, nyvticnrux, violacea, and exilis. 



Natafores. — The great majority of North American birds be- 

 longing to this order, breed to the north of the valley of the 

 St. La\Arence, and are merely winterers or birds of passage in 

 the middle states. The lakes of Mexico are the chief winter 



