PASSERES PASSERINE 697 



often-quoted descriptions given by him and Audubon of Pigeon- 

 haunts in the then " back- woods " of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana 

 need not here be reproduced. That of the latter was declared by 

 Waterton to be a gross exaggeration if not an entire fabrication ; 

 but the critic would certainly have changed his tone had he known 

 that, some hundred and fifty years earlier, Wild Pigeons so swarmed 

 and ravaged the colonists' crops near Montreal that a bishop of his 

 own Church was constrained to exorcise them with holy water as if 

 they had been demons. 1 The rapid and sustained flight of these 

 Pigeons is also as well-established as their former overwhelming 

 abundance birds having been killed in the State of New York 

 whose crops contained undigested grains of rice that must have 

 been not long before plucked and swallowed in South Carolina or 

 Georgia. The Passenger-Pigeon is about the size of a common 

 Turtle-DoVE, but with a long, wedge-shaped tail. The male is of 

 a dark slate-colour above, and purplish-bay beneath, the sides of 

 the neck being enlivened by gleaming violet, green and gold. 

 The female is drab-coloured above and dull white beneath, with 

 only a slight trace of the brilliant neck-markings 2 (see PIGEON). 



PASSERES, the name given by Linnaeus to his Sixth Order of 

 Birds, which though for a time set aside in favour of other designa- 

 tions, INSESSORES and the like, or modified into such a form as 

 PASSERINE, 3 has been restored to use of late years, and approximately 

 in its author's sense the genera Certhia, Sitta, Oriolus, Gracula, 

 Corws and Paradisea, which he had placed in his PICLE, being 

 added, while Caprimulgus, the portion of Hirundo containing the 

 SWIFTS, and Columba have been removed. For further subdivision 

 of the Order, which, though offering comparatively little variation of 

 essential importance, comprehends far more genera and species than 

 all the others put together, see INTRODUCTION. 



PASSERINE, a group so named of Nitzsch in 1820 (Deutsche 

 Archiv fur Physiol. vi. p. 253) to include the genera Sturnus, Oriolus, 

 Lanius, Muscicapa, Ampelis, Hirundo, Turdus, Accentor, Sylvia, Motor 

 cilia, Anthus, Alauda, Parus, Sitta, Certhia (with Tichodroma), 



1 Voyages du Baron de la Hontan dans I'Ameriqice septentrionale, ed. 2, 

 Amsterdam : 1705, vol. i. pp. 93, 94. In the first edition, published at The 

 Hague in 1703, the passage, less explicit in details but to the same effect, is at 

 p. 80. The author's letter, describing the circumstance, is dated May 1687. 



2 There are several records of the occurrence in Britain of this Pigeon, but in 

 most cases the birds noticed cannot be supposed to have found their own way 

 hither. One, which was shot in Fife in 1825, may, however, have crossed the 

 Atlantic unassisted by man. 



3 The names Passeriformes and lately even Passeridse ( !) have been in some 

 instances employed ; with very slight or no modification they signify the same 

 thing as Passerinse. 



