840 



HISTORY OP 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 ktiown to make so great a destruc- 

 tion among the eggs of grouse, pheasants, partridges, 

 and even among young chickens, in many parts of 



