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PASSENGER PIGEON. 



Columba migratoria, FLEMING. YARRELL. 



Ectopistes migratorius, SELBY. 



Columba A Pigeon. Migratoria Migratory. 



THIS Pigeon, far-famed on account of its extraordinary 

 numbers, is a native of North America, from north to south. 

 Captain Sir John Ross, R. N., mentions one which flew on 

 board the Victory in Baffin's Bay, during a storm, in the 

 73J degree of latitude, on the 31st. of July, 1829. It has 

 been taken also in Europe, in Russia and Norway; and one 

 was shot, while perched on a wall near a dove-cote, at West- 

 hall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, Scotland, on the 

 31st. of December, 1825. 



The Passenger Pigeon, as imported by its name, is of 

 migratory habits in jts native country. 



These birds may be kept in confinement, and a pair built 

 and hatched their young in the menagerie of the Zoological 

 Society in the year 1833, and another pair about the same 

 time in that of Lord Derby, at Knowsley, in Lancashire. In 

 their native regions their numbers seem to be almost incredibly 

 vast; for miles and miles and miles flock follows after flock, 

 and that so fast as scarcely to be able to be reckoned as 

 they pass; Audubon counted one hundred and sixty-three 

 flocks in twenty-one minutes. If a Hawk threatens them, 

 their movements, he says, are singularly beautiful, as they 

 wheel with the force of a torrent and a noise like thunder 

 with inconceivable velocity in various changing figures, the 

 whole mass gliding through the air as if a single living body. 

 He gives a surprising account of the numbers in which, in 

 their peregrinations, they are captured in the easiest manner 

 in consequence of their dense propinquity to each other, and 



