340 



HISTOBY OF CALIFORNIA. 



THE MAGPIE. 



summer they are so rare, even in the Missouri terri 

 tory, that from March to October, and from St. Louis 

 to the trading house at the Mandans, a distance by 

 the river of sixteen hundred miles, a party of near 

 seventy men, attended by constant hunters, never met 

 with a single Pie, nor were any appearances of their 

 nests any where visible. Eleven hundred miles up the 

 Arkansas, and more than one thousand up the Red 

 River, countries which. I visited in summer, never pre 

 sented a specimen of this otherwise familiar and rov 

 ing bird. The season of incubation with the Ameri 

 can Pies, so different from their familiar habits in the 

 old continent, is passed, no doubt, in the wooded re 

 cesses of the Rocky Mountains, which abound with 

 berries and acorns, and with small birds and their 

 eggs. They are known to make so great a destruc 

 tion among the eggs of grouse, pheasants, partridges, 

 and even among young chickens, in many parts of 



