ZOOLOGY. 75 



November 25th, 1851. Edwin Jones, master and part 

 ovmer of the schooner " G. 0. Bigelow," when reporting his 

 vessel from England this morning, informed me that about 

 nine or ten days after his departure from Bermuda in Sep- 

 tember last, with pardoned convicts on board, for England, 

 the weather for several days haying been li^t, with an 

 easterly breeze, and the vessel being then between five and 

 six hundred miles east of these Islands, great multitudes of 

 birds, which he took to be plovers, were observed passing 

 over the vessel in a southerly direction, for two days. These 

 birds he describes as flying in flocks, some of which 

 amounted to many thousands, others to considerably less, 

 diminishing in number to parties of fifty and thirty. He 

 also states that during the whole of the intervening night, 

 these flocks could be distinctly heard passing over the 

 ship. 



The "Gr. 0. Bigelow" left the Bermudas on the above 

 mentioned voyage, on the 3rd of September, 1851, conse- 

 quently, this immense flight, doubtless the golden plover of 

 America, must have been observed by him about the 12th 

 of 13th of that month. 



These great migratory columns of plover do not appear 

 to cross the ocean, to the westward of the Bermudas, a few 

 flocks only being met with in that direction by the 

 numerous vessels which trade between those Islands and 

 the United States. 



Let us now endeavour to trace the southern destination 

 of these wonderful birds. 



A highly respected friend, long resident in the Island of 

 Antigua, assured me that, in the month of September, that 

 island was annually visited by countless flocks of plover, 



