62 COLUMBTD.fi. 



United States to Canada, and as far as Hudson's and 

 Baffin's Bays. Its principal food consists of the nuts of the 

 red beech. They live in companies, often of many thou- 

 sands, their numbers covering a space of many miles in 

 extent ; and their place of repose is marked by the devasta- 

 tion they occasion amongst the trees. They breed in such 

 large companies, that from sixty to a hundred nests are placed 

 in a single tree. The nests are composed of small sticks, and 

 appear to contain only a single white egg each, 1 ' 



Our plate is taken from a specimen in the Zoological 

 Gardens, in the Regent's Park, London, and represents the 

 male bird in adult plumage. All the upper parts, from the 

 head to the tip of the tail, are blueish ash-coloured. The tips 

 of the tertials and quill- feathers are dusky. Some of the 

 feathers on the wing-coverts are marked with a black spot on 

 the outer web of the feather. The bastard wing, and the 

 greater coverts of the primaries, are black. The two middle 

 tail feathers are black, and much elongated ; the next are 

 grey, and shorter as they approach the outer feathers, which 

 are white on the outer webs and tips. The tail feathers 

 being white at their base, with a black spot, produce a fine 

 boundary to the white under tail coverts : the upper tail- 

 coverts are very much lengthened. On the sides of the neck 

 this pigeon has the usual markings or metallic scaled fea- 

 thers common to its family, which joins the very lovely 

 salmon colour of the throat, neck, sides, and breast ; and 

 this salmon colour decreases in intensity as it descends, and 

 fades off in the white of the belly. The flanks have a tinge 

 of grey. The beak is black ; the iris fire coloured ; and 

 the legs are between lake and carmine red. 



While finishing the history of the Passenger Pigeon, we 

 learn that in the beginning of April, 1843, three birds 

 of this species were seen in the woods of Littleton Com- 

 mon, in Middlesex. They appeared from their plumage 



