PIGEON. 



467 



manner increase of ease relaxes the muscles, and 

 swells and softens their fibres, so that they become 

 tasteless, and when this is carried to excess they be- 

 come noxious from their insipidity, and do not stimu- 

 late the stomach. This is a principle that runs through 

 the whole of living- and growing nature, and applies 

 to vegetables as well as animals ; and there is a fine 

 moral in it, for it is a practical demonstration that 

 the middle course is always the best. When these 

 circumstances are considered, there seems little doubt 

 that, at least after a generation or two, the passenger 

 turtle might become as desirable for the table as the 

 common pigeon ; and, as it is so much more elegant 

 and beautiful, it would make one of the finest rural 

 ornaments in the country. Nor would it be at all 

 amiss to introduce these birds into our forests. It 

 seems indeed somewhat strange that the forests, which 

 are in some respects the richest of our pastures, 

 should never hitherto have been turned to any useful 

 purpose in the way of maintaining birds. The only 

 really good forest bird which we ever had the wood 

 grouse, or capercailzie as it was called in the High- 

 landshas been exterminated ; and all that remains 

 is the wood pigeon. Forests are in themselves highly 

 interesting ; there are thousands of acres in the three 

 kingdoms which would be much more profitably ap- 

 plied to the growth of timber than to any other pur- 

 pose ; and, were they so applied, there is no question 

 that it would add greatly to the value of the remain- 

 ing part of the land, inasmuch as it is, in a great 

 measure, to the bare places, where trees alone would 

 be profitable, that we owe the burning drought of our 

 summers, and the extreme cold of our winters, both 

 of which are often highly disastrous. Now if we had 

 the forests, and it is a disgrace to the proprietors of 

 the soil that we have them not, there is no reason 

 why they might not be peopled with every forest 

 bird, whether useful or ornamental, that could stand 

 the climate. The birds of America are especially 

 adapted for this purpose, because the extremes of the 

 seasons are more wide there than they are with us ; 

 and had it not been for the barbarous and most un- 

 patriotic havoc which the boors of the back woods 

 have committed on the wild turkeys, our forests 

 might in time have been stocked with them. We 

 must leave the subject, however, and notice one or 

 two more of this section of the pigeons. 



Of these we shall notice only two species, one of 

 them a native of Southern Africa, and the other of 

 New Holland. They agree in their general structure 

 with the long-tailed turtles of America ; but they 

 depart further from the colours of the European 

 pigeons. They are birds of very small size, slender 

 and elegant in their forms, very well winged, and 

 have the tails very long and acutely wedge-shaped, 

 with the two central feathers projecting far beyond 

 the rest, and narrowed toward their tips. Like the 

 passenger turtle of America, their tails consist of 

 twelve feathers. It has been proposed to make a 

 separate subgenus of them, but we are convinced that 

 this would be merely adding to the number of words 

 without increasing the quantity of knowledge, and 

 thereby rendering the study "of ornithology more 

 intricate. 



The Cape Turtle. This species, as its name im- 

 ports, is of Southern Africa. It is very small, but 

 exceedingly handsome. Its length is about seven 

 inche?, but more than the half of that is occupied by 

 the tail. The bill is of moderate size, straight in the 



greater part of its length, but with the tip of the upper 

 mandible curving over that of the under one, and it 

 is of a yellowish-brown colour. The wings are of 

 moderate length, but not so long in proportion as 

 those of the passenger turtle ; they are pointed, the 

 second quill being the longest, and both the first and 

 the third being considerably shorter. Both the tarsi 

 and the toes are short, and the claws are blunt and 

 nearly straight. From this structure of the feet it 

 follows as a matter of course, that the chief labour of 

 the bird, namely, the finding of its food, must be upon 

 the ground, though the shortness of the tarsi must 

 make it a slow walker, as the whole of the pigeon 

 tribe, like the gallinaceous birds, walk with the alter- 

 nate foot and do not hop. One of the most striking 

 marks of colour in this bird is a large patch of deep 

 black, which passes over the forehead, the sides of 

 the head as far as the eyes, the chin, throat, foresides 

 of the neck, and the breast, extending in breadth 

 upon the last, and rounded at its termination. The 

 top of the head, which is much flatter than in most 

 of the species, the sides of the neck, the lower part 

 of the breast, the flanks, and the smaller coverts of 

 the wings, are pale French grey. The rest of the 

 under parts and the thighs are white. The clothing 

 feathers on the upper part are brownish-grey, and so 

 are the nape and hind part of the neck. The feathers 

 of the wings are brown with an orange tinge, gradually 

 deepening toward the primary quills, and passing into 

 black. On the wing there are two well-marked spots 

 of deep brownish purple, with metallic reflections; 

 the under coverts are orange-brown ; two black bars 

 cross the feathers of the rump, and between them 

 there is a stripe of pale grey ; the basal half of the 

 two central feathers of the tail is brownish-grey, and 

 thence they gradually deepen into black. The other 

 feathers are bluish-grey at their bases, and pale grey 

 for a small portion of their tips, with a black band 

 between that and the former colour. They are 

 rounded at their tips, and graduated, the difference 

 in their length diminishing as the external ones are 

 reached. The feet are yellowish-brown, the same as 

 the bill. 



It is necessary to pay particular attention to the dif- 

 ference between the male and female of this bird ; be- 

 cause inattention to this, or seeing only the one sex and 

 not the other, has led different naturalists to describe 

 the most conspicuous marking of them in very opposite 

 colours. The frontlet and gorget,which are black in the 

 male, are pure white or nearly so in the female. The 

 other colours are distributed in the same manner, but 

 they are much paler in their tints. The young males 

 have the throat and breast brown with white bars, 

 and black bars on the back and wing- coverts, the top 

 of the head brown, and the chin white. On account 

 of these differences of colour, they also have been 

 sometimes mistaken for a separate species, and we 

 believe that there are some books in which the species 

 taken generally are described as having the mottled 

 colour. 



This is a very interesting bird, from its being, in its 

 character and habits, a member of the pigeon family, 

 and yet being very little weightier in the body than 

 a sparrow. Though it is very generally distributed 

 over Africa southward of the desert, and even down 

 to the valley of the Nile as far as Nubia, very little is 

 known of its habits farther than that it follows the 

 general law of the other turtles, by nestling in trees, 

 and seeking its food upon the ground. The eggs are 

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