NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 411 



Lawson, in his Natural History of Carolina (1714), 

 records facts which confirm Wilson and Audubon as to 

 the number of these pigeons, declaring that the flocks, 

 as they passed, in great measure obstructed the light 

 of day. 



The great fertility of the dove-kind suffices to keep up 

 numbers more than adequate to resist the attacks of 

 hawks and other birds of prey, and the still more sweep- 

 ing destruction of man, the omnivorous. Biberg* remarks, 

 that if you suppose two pigeons to hatch nine times 

 a-year, they may produce in four years 14,672 young ; 

 and Stillingfleet states that these numbers ought to have 

 been 14,760, or the expression should have been altered, 

 for Biberg includes the first pair. 



On the day that I observed the young hybrid goura, I 

 watched the wart-hogs (Phacochoerus). Their mode of 

 attack is by going on their knees like the gnu ; and, 

 young as they were, they already had callosities on those 

 parts. They were exercising their tusks in a sham fight 

 with an empty bag, which, dropping on their knees, they 

 charged, tossed up, and, rising, caught it on their tusks. 

 In the course of their gambols, they threw the bag on 

 the top of the railing of their enclosure. One of them 

 raised itself on its hind legs, jumped at it, and pulled it 

 down with its mouth, when they resumed their game 

 with it. The attack of the full-gTOwn animal, with its 

 enormous, sabre-like tusks, must be most formidable. 



Shortly afterwards, I came on a flock of ten hoopoes, 

 and stood admiring their butterfly-like flight, which must 

 aid them in their escape from hawks, as the desultory 

 motions of the butterflies when on the wing save them 

 from fly-catchers and other small birds. 



The three young grisly (?) bears were in high force, one 

 appealing to the people most energetically for supplies, 

 another dancing merrily, and the third lagging behind 



*' Am. AcacL 



