4944 Birds. 



which are raised by pulleys (attached to the ends of poles affixed to the trees) to a 

 height of perhaps forty feet from the ground. At each of the top coiners of the nets 

 a stone is tied, so that, when the string which passes through the pulley is let loose, 

 they fall quickly to the ground. lu front of the line of trees, some thirty or forty 

 yards, stand several very tall slender poles, — raised, by splicing two or three together, 

 to upwards of eighty or ninety feet in height, — and a-top of which are placed rudely- 

 formed cradles occupied by boys, who, raised aloft in the air at this apparently 

 dangerous elevation, play an important part in the proceedings : they are furnished 

 with several roughly-carved flat pieces of wood, made something like a pair of wings 

 with a handle at the end, called eperviers, i. e. hawks. The pigeons arrive from the 

 Plains of France, and come up the slope of the hill to cross over into the Valley of 

 Campan, on their route southwards through the Pyrenees : they are of two species — 

 called there Palombes (Columba palumbus, our common woodpigeon) and Ramiers 

 (Columba anas, the stockdove). Directly one of the boys in the boxes aloft perceives 

 any pigeons approaching he gives a peculiar signal of warning to the fowlers, and 

 everything is made in readiness. On the birds approaching more nearly he launches 

 into the air one of his eperviers ; this falls with a whirring sound, such as I suppose a 

 hawk would cause by his stoop. The unfortunate pigeons, thinking the arch-enemy 

 is nigh, immediately fly down low towards the ground, and on seeking to pass through 

 the spaces left in the row of trees, come against the nets placed to intercept them. 

 The fowler then lets go his string, which passes through the pulley, and the net and 

 birds come to the ground together. The season for taking pigeons in this manner 

 begins on the 10th of September and lasts till the feast of St. Martin (October 1 1th). 

 During the whole of this time the fowlers never leave their posts from dawn to dusk ; 

 their success is naturally very various. Sometimes they take many hundreds in one 

 day, sometimes very few, and sometimes none. The birds pass at a greater elevation 

 when the weather is fine and clear, and are then, of course, more likely to pass above 

 the nets. The Palombes, although more numerous than the Ramiers, always fly 

 higher, and are wilder and more difficult to take. The ordinary price of the former 

 in the market at Bagneres is about twenty sous, of the latter only about sixteen sous 

 a-pair. There is said to be no particular time of day at which the flights are more 

 numerous; the only successful take I saw took place between 12 and 1 o'clock, p.m. 

 A naturalist resident at Bagneres de Bigorre (who has an excellent collection of all the 

 animal and vegetable productions of that part of the world) tells me that the ring 

 dove never breeds there, but passes northwards, in the spring, in pairs, and (as we have 

 seen) returns southwards, in the autumn, in small flights. This is very different 

 from what is generally, I believe, the case in the British isles, where the ring dove, 

 although collecting in flocks in the winter, is found in most localities all the year 

 through. — Philip Lutley Selater ; 49, Pall Mall, November 12, 1855. 



On the Habits of Megapodius Cumingii. — In Labuan these birds are not un- 

 common, and are said to be principally confined to small islands, to such more 

 especially as have sandy beaches; they are very rarely to be seen, being extremely 

 shy, and frequenting dense and flat parts of the jungle, where the ratans grow, and 

 where the luxuriance of the vegetation renders concealment easy. The Malays snare 

 them by forming long thick fences in unfrequented parts of the jungle, in which, at 

 certain intervals, they leave openings, where they place traps; the birds run through 

 the jungle in search of food, and, coming to this fence, run along it till they find one 

 of the openings, through which they push their way, and are caught in the trap. In 



