RICE BUNTING, 171 



but regularly to breed, and rear their young, where rice never 

 was, and probably never will be cultivated? Their so recent ar- 

 rival on this part of the continent 1 believe to be altogether 

 imaginary, because, though there were not a single grain of rice 

 cultivated within the United States, the country produces an 

 exuberance of food of which they are no less fond. Insects of 

 various kinds, grubs, may-flies and caterpillars, the young ears of 

 Indian corn, and the seeds of the wild oats, or, as it is called in 

 Pennsylvania, reeds, (the Zizania aquatica of Linnaeus) which 

 grows in prodigious abundance along the marshy shores of our 

 large rivers, furnish, not only them, but millions of Rail, with 

 a delicious subsistence for several weeks. I do not doubt, how- 

 ever, that the introduction of rice, but more particularly the pro- 

 gress of agriculture in this part of America, has greatly increased 

 their numbers, by multiplying their sources of subsistence fifty 

 fold within the same extent of country. 



In the month of April, or very early in May, the Rice Bun- 

 ting, male and female, in the dresses in which they are figured 

 on the plate, arrive within the southern boundaries of the Uni- 

 ted States; and are seen around the town of Savannah, in Geor- 

 gia, about the fourth of May, sometimes in separate parties of 

 males and females; but more generally promiscuously. They 

 remain there but a short time; and about the twelfth of May 

 make their appearance in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, as 

 they did at Savannah. While here the males are extremely gay 

 and full of song; frequenting meadows, newly ploughed fields, 

 sides of creeks, rivers, and watery places, feeding on may-flies 

 and caterpillars, of which they destroy great quantities. In 

 their passage, however, through Virginia at this season, they 

 do great damage to the early wheat and barley, while in its 

 milky state. About the twentieth of May they disappear on 

 their way to the north. Nearly at the same time they arrive in 

 the state of New York, spread over the whole New England 

 states as far as the river St. Lawrence from lake Ontario to the 

 sea; in all of which places north of Pennsylvania they remain 

 during the summer, building, and rearing their young. The 



