70 MY FOREIGN DOVES AND PIGEONS. 
three green, changing to rich fiery copper, the last 
row large patches of violet, changing into Prussian 
blue. The rest of the body is very like the 
plumage of a pheasant, being brownish mottled 
feathers, the crown of the head olive brown, with 
a dull purplish band over the eye. The hen has a 
whitish forehead, her breast is paler, not so rich a 
shade of purple. The bronze in the wings is more 
greenish gold in the first three rows and purple in 
the hind row (lacking the red copper and blue in 
the cock); her shape and mottling is very pheasant- 
like. The eves are full and dark, the feet salmon 
red, the beak slaty black. In shape the Bronze- 
wing is rather long than rounded; it is a heavily- 
built bird, and the legs look rather shori in propar- 
tion to the body. 
WILD LIFE. 
Perhaps there is no foreign pigeon that has been 
written about in iis wild state so much is the 
Bronze-wing. Gould says of them: ‘tThey love to 
dwell on the most sterile plains, where 
they feed almost exclusively on grass- 
seeds, and whence, on the approach of 
evening, they wing their way, with 
arrow-like swiftness, to the water-holes 
many miles distant.” 
“In the maps the name of ‘Pigeon 
Ponds,’ given to welcome pools of 
water, still marks the mode of their 
first discovery,’’? so says Dixon in his 
account of the Bronze-wing. He also 
wives us some of the experiences of 
Captain Sturt, whose vivid pen-pic- 
tures make us realise how valuable is 
this trait of the Australian pigeons in 
unconsciously guiding those travellers 
in need of water. 
To understand how great that need 
is, let us hear first what Captain Sturt 
says about his personal experience of 
the heat of Australia during his all but 
successful effort to reach the centre of 
the continent. 
He says: ‘‘Stones that had lain in 
the sun were with difficulty held in the 
hand; the men could not always keep 
their feet within the glowing stirrups; 
if a match fell to the ground it ignited, and the 
earth was thoroughly heated to the depth of three 
or four feet; their hair ceased to grow, and their 
nails were as brittle as glass; the atmosphere on 
some occasions was so rarified that they felt a 
difficulty in breathing, and a burning sensation on 
the crown of the head as if an hot iron had been 
there; they were obliged to bury their wax candles 
to keep them from melting away; they planted 
seeds in the bed of the creek, but the sun burnt 
them to cinders the moment they appeared above 
the ground.’’ At three o’clock in the afternoon the 
thermometer in the sun was 157 degrees. 
I should like to give you Captain Sturt’s account 
in his own words how he was greatly in need of 
water and how he was guided to it by a pigeon, 
but I have not, unfortunately, space to give it in 
detail. It is very pathetic. He tells us how, when 
they were badly in need of water, none of the 
horses would eat, save one called ‘‘Traveller.’’ 
They all collected round him as he sat under a tree, 
and his own horse pulled his hat off his head to call 
his attention to their thirst, but no water was to be 
had; so the men saddled again and they proceeded 
onwards. At the head of the valley poor 
‘Traveller’? dropped down dead, and when they 
finally came to the place where they fully expected 
to find water it was gone. Captain Sturt poked 
his finger in the mud, and moistened his lips with 
a Jittle water that oozed into the holes. 
“suddenly a pigeon topped the sand-hill—it being 
THE BRONZE-WINGED PIGEON. 
Photo by Mr. D. Seth-Smith. 
From The Avicultural Magazine. 
the firse bird we had seen—a solitary bird; passed 
us like lightning, it pitched for « moment, and a 
moment only, on the plain, about a quarter of a 
mile from us, and then flew away.’? Mr. Sturt 
marked the spot, and there was water—water that 
in their most desperate condition meant life. 
Temminck tells us that the Bronze-wing makes 
its nest “‘in the holes of trees at a slight distance 
from the ground, often on the ground itself, and 
lays two white eggs; their principal food is a small 
