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 THE ZENAIDA DOVE. 



COLUMBA ZENAIDA, BoNAP. 

 PIATE CLXII. Male and Female. 



The impressions made on the mind in youth, are frequently stronger 

 than those at a more advanced period of life, and are generally retained. 

 My Father often told me, that when yet a child, my first attempt at 

 drawing was from a preserved specimen of a dove, and many times re- 

 peated to me that birds of this kind are usually remarkable for the gentle- 

 ness of their disposition, and that the manner in which they prove their 

 mutual affection, and feed their offspring, was undoubtedly intended in 

 part to teach other beings a lesson of connubial and parental attachment. 

 Be this as it may, hypothesis or not, I have always been especially fond 

 of doves. The timidity and anxiety which they all manifest, on being dis- 

 turbed during incubation, and the continuance of their mutual attachment 

 for years, are distinguishing traits in their character. Who can approach 

 a sitting dove, hear its notes of remonstrance, or feel the feeble strokes of 

 its wings, without being sensible that he is committing a wrong act ? 



The cooing of the Zenaida Dove is so peculiar, that one who hears it 

 for the first time naturally stops to ask, " What bird is that ?" A man 

 who was once a pirate assured me that several times, while at certain wells 

 dug in the burning shelly sands of a well known Key, which must here 

 be nameless, the soft and melancholy cry of the doves awoke in his breast 

 feelings which had long slumbered, melted his heart to repentance, and 

 caused him to linger at the spot in a state of mind which he only who 

 compares the wretchedness of guilt within him with the happiness of 

 former innocence, can truly feel. He said he never left the place with- 

 out increased fears of futurity, associated as he was, although I believe 

 by force, with a band of the most desperate villains that ever annoyed 

 the navigation of the Florida coasts. So deeply moved was he by the 

 notes of any bird, and especially by those of a dove, the only soothing 

 sounds he ever heard during his life of horrors, that through these plain- 

 tive notes, and them alone, he was induced to escape from his vessel, 

 abandon his turbulent companions, and return to a family deploring his 

 absence. After paying a parting visit to those wells, and listening once 



