18 Canon H. B. Tristram — Ornithologiral 



guished from the Blue Rock Pigeon, of wliicli we had seen 

 many in the cliffs above us. After working up the glen for 

 three hours, we clambered out on the opposite side, and 

 emerged on what is certainly the richest piece of Gran 

 Canaria, — Doramas, not a village, but a district of scattered 

 houses and farms, with lovely pathways shaded by laurel 

 trees, Indian fig, and various other non-European trees, to 

 me then unknown. At the further end of Doramas is a 

 fragment of primaeval forest of laurel trees, and here we 

 hoped to find the " Palomo Turquese.^' We gradually as- 

 cended till we reached a height of 4000 feet on the side of 

 the Pico de la Yirgen. In the wood I had a glimpse of two 

 Pigeons which passed over us, and which the guide exclaimed 

 were the " Turquese.^^ They were not the Rock Dove, and 

 certainly had not the whitish tail of Culumha laiirivora, which 

 is very conspicuous in flight, and with which I fortunately 

 became well acquainted elsewhere. The extremity of the 

 tail was dark, but more than this I cannot aver. On another 

 occasion I got a better view of a solitary Pigeon of the same 

 species in a patch of laurel not far from Doramas. 



Both my guide at Doramas and another mountaineer 

 whom I found near the Pinar del Pajonal professed to be 

 well acquainted with the Turquese, and stated that while 

 the laurel-forest existed it was common. But the Spanish 

 Government unfortunately rewarded a hero of the Cuban 

 war by a grant of this crown-forest, and he naturally enough 

 at once proceeded to cut down all the timber and cultivate 

 the estate. Now both the known Pigeons, C. boUii and C. 

 laurivora, Hve principally, if not almost exclusively, on the 

 fruit of laurel trees; small wonder, then, that Turquese has 

 disappeared along with his food ! But the problem remains 

 unsolved, was the Turquese of Gran Canaria a distinct 

 species, or was it C. bollii of Tenerife and Gomera? Pro- 

 bably the latter. But we have not yet ascertained the 

 species of the island of Palma ; and should this latter prove 

 distinct, the Pigeon of Gran Canaria may have been so 

 likewise, and be on the verge of perishing, like the avifauna 

 of Rodriguez and Mauritius, unwept, uuhonoured, and un- 

 sung. 



