ZOOLOGY. 75 
November 25th, 1851. Edwin Jones, master and part 
owner of the schooner “G. O. Bigelow,” when reporting his 
vessel from England this morning, informed me that about 
nine or ten days after his departure from Bermuda in Sep- 
tember last, with pardoned convicts on board, for England, 
the weather for several days having been light, with an 
easterly breeze, and the vessel being then between five and 
six hundred miles east of these Islands, great multitudes of 
birds, which he took to be plovers, were observed passing 
over the vessel in a southerly direction, for two days. These 
birds he describes as flying in flocks, some of which 
amounted to many thousands, others to considerably less, 
diminishing in number to parties of fifty and thirty. He 
also states that during the whole of the intervening night, 
these flocks could be distinctly heard passing over the 
ship. 
The “G. O. Bigelow” left the Bermudas on the above 
mentioned voyage, on the 3rd of September, 1851, conse- 
quently, this immense flight, doubtless the golden plover of 
America, must have been observed by him about the 12th 
of 13th of that month. 
These great migratory columns of plover do not appear 
to cross the ocean, to the westward of the Bermudas, a few 
flocks only being met with in that direction by the 
numerous vessels which trade between those Islands and 
the United States. 
Let us now endeavour to trace the southern destination 
of these wonderful birds. 
A highly respected friend, long resident in the Island of 
Antigua, assured me that, in the month of September, that 
island was annually visited by countless flocks of plover, 
