162 



from a country bordering on the southern tro- 

 pic." 



I reminded my uncle of the account we had 

 lately read in Dr. Brewster's Journal of Science, 

 about the rapid flight of the wild pigeons that 

 cross America in search of food. 



"Yes," said he, "and there is a curious fact 

 recorded in that paper, which satisfactorily de- 

 monstrates, that the sustained velocity with 

 which some birds remove from one district to 

 another, in search of food, is not confined to the 

 instinctive energy which belongs to the time of 

 annual migration, but that it is their habitual 

 and daily practice. The circumstance to which 

 I allude is this : pigeons have been killed in 

 New York, whose craws were still filled with 

 fresh rice, which must have been collected in 

 Carolina ; and, therefore, as the pigeon digests 

 its food very quickly, they could have been but 

 a few hours performing a journey of three hundred 

 miles. But we need not go so far off for ex- 

 amples of the ease and rapidity with which 

 pigeons go to great distances in quest of some 

 favourite food ; for it is well known that in the 

 vetch season in Norfolk, the Dutch pigeons come 

 over in the morning, and return to Holland in the 

 evening." 



Mary shewed us a passage in the voyage of La 

 Perouse, which proves that swallows do go a long 

 way to the southward. " A swallow of the 



