316 coLUMBnm 



Sir James Ross, in the Natural History portion of the 

 Appendix to the Narrative of the second voyage by Sir 

 John Ross, says of this Pigeon, " A young male bird 

 flew on board the * Victory' during a storm, whilst crossing 

 Baffin's Bay in latitude 73 J N. on the 31st of July, 1829. 

 It has never before been seen beyond the sixty-second de- 

 gree of north latitude ; and the circumstance of our having 

 met with it so far to the northward, is a singular and in- 

 teresting fact." Sir John Richardson, in the Appendix to 

 Captain Back's Narrative, referring to this occurrence of 

 the Passenger Pigeon, remarks, " that it flew on board the 

 ' Victory ' during a storm, and must have strayed from a 

 great distance. The wind, as we find by a reference to 

 Sir John Ross's Narrative, blew from the north-east at 

 the beginning of the gale, shifting afterwards to the east- 

 ward. As the 'Victory' was to the northward of the 

 island of Disco at the time, if the bird came in either 

 of these directions, it must have taken flight from the 

 northern part of Greenland, but it is not likely to have 

 found food on that barren coast." M. Temminck, in 

 his Manual of Birds found in Europe, says, this bird 

 has been taken both in Norway and in Russia. Dr. 

 Fleming, in his History of British Animals, page 145, 

 says, " I have to add the occurrence of a single individual, 

 of a species hitherto unknown, even as a straggler, the 

 Passenger Pigeon, Columba migratoria. It was shot, while 

 perched on a wall in the neighbourhood of a pigeon-house, 

 at Westhall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, the 31st 

 of December, 1825. The feathers were quite fresh and 

 entire, like those of a wild bird." This species is therefore 

 included in this History of British Birds. 



Since the publication of the preceding notice, another 

 example of this species has been killed near Royston, in 

 Hertfordshire, which being sent, as in the case of the Rock 



