500 



iXA TUR A L HIS TOR Y. 



is with some, but better to the eye than stomach, such as only a strong- 

 appetite can vanish." 



Every little while the story is told that some voyager to the South 

 Seas has discovered the clodo alive, — the last repetition was in 1886, — 

 but in every instance it turns out that the bird was considerably different, 

 came from a different locality, and was well known before as the tooth- 

 billed pigeon of the Samoan Islands. It is a smaller bird than the dodo, 

 a strong flyer, and has a plumage of a reddish brown. An especially 

 interesting fact in connection with it is its recent change of habits. When 

 first known it was a terrestrial bird, spending most of its time on the 



Fig. 418. — Blue-headed pigeon (Starnsenas ci/anocephala) . 



ground; but since cats and rats were introduced, it lives almost exclu- 

 sively in trees; and hence instead of rapidly approaching extinction it is 

 becoming more abundant. 



The blue-headed pigeon, or blue-headed quail-dove, is a beautiful species, 

 living in Cuba ; but occasionally crossing to Florida on the one hand, and 

 Jamaica and the other West India Islands on the other. Its general color 

 is a reddish brown, the patch on the breast black, the line beneath the eye 

 white, and the top of the head blue. 



As a rule, ground-feeding birds are poor flyers ; but the beautiful Nico- 



