COLUMB^E. ( 153 ) COLUMBID&. 



THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 



Ectopistes migratorius. 



Now down through dismal swamps pursue your way, 

 Where pine and hemlocks thick obscure the day ; 

 Whose mingled tops an hundred feet in air, 

 The clustering nests of swarming Pigeons bear, 



ALEXANDER WILSON. 



ACCORDING to Mr. Howard Saunders, in his continuation of 

 Professor Newton's edition of Yarrell's British Birds, 1 there 

 are only five undoubted instances of the occurrence of the 

 Passenger Pigeon in the British Islands. Of these a speci- 

 men in the collection of the late Lord Haddington at 

 Mellerstain, shot by himself in the immediate vicinity of 

 that place, forms the fourth. Lord Binning, in communi- 

 cating to Dr. Turnbull a note of its occurrence at Meller- 

 stain, adds : " The bird is, however, somewhat deprived of 

 the interest which would otherwise attach to it, from the 

 fact of a gentleman in Berwickshire having ' turned out ' 

 several Passenger Pigeons shortly before the Mellerstain 

 specimen was shot. Presuming, however, that this was one 

 of the birds ' turned out,' it is rather remarkable that, after 

 their release, no other specimen was heard of as having been 

 seen in our part of the country." 2 The date when the bird 

 was shot is not given by Lord Binning, but in some MS. 

 notes, kindly supplied to me by Mr. Hardy for use in this 

 work, I find that the latter, writing under date 1857, says : 

 " A Passenger Pigeon was killed at Mellerstain four years 



1 Vol. iii., 1882-84, p. 28. 



2 Turnbull's Birds of East-Lothian, 1867, p. 41. 



