230 BAND-TAILED PIGEON. 
BAND-TAILED PIGEON. (Columba fasciata.) 
PLATE VIII.—Fice. 3. 
Columba fasciata, Say, in Long’s Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, ii. p. 10.— 
Philadelphia Museum, No. 4988. 
COLUMBA PASCIATA.—Say.* 
Columba fasciata, Bonap. Synop. p. 119.—Wagl. Syst. Av. Columba, No. 47? 
Tats bird, which is a male, was shot in July, by Mr Titian 
Peale, at a saline spring on a small tributary of the river Platte, 
within the first range of the Rocky Mountains ; it was accom- 
panied by another individual, probably its mate, which escaped. 
As no other specimens have been discovered, the reader will 
not be surprised that our specific description is unaccompanied 
by a general history of their manners. 
The band-tailed pigeon is thirteen inches long; the bill is 
yellow, black at tip, and somewhat gibbous behind the nos- 
trils ; the feet are yellow, and the nails black; the irides are 
blackish ; the head is of a purple cinereous colour ; the neck, 
at its junction with the head, has a white semiband, beneath 
* We have already passed two distinct forms among the Columbide 
in the passenger and Carolina pigeons, of long and slender form and 
wedge-shaped tails ; and the diminutive ground doves, whose size and 
strength sometimes hardly exceed that of a sparrow. In the bird now 
described with the lewcocephala, figured in the present volume, we see a 
third form, and perhaps that to which the title Columba should be 
restricted, including, as more familiar examples, the common tame pigeon 
and the cushat of Europe. Some of the other forms in this beautiful 
group seem more restricted in their distribution. Thus the ground doves 
and passenger pigeons will nearly claim America; Vinagowill claim India 
and different parts of the Asiatic continent ; and that lovely group, with 
feathered tarsi, known under Ptilonopus, Swain., takes India, New Hol- 
land, and the range of the South Pacific, while those of the present division 
will extend over the world. Their form is strongly made, with highly 
developed means of a powerful flight ; plumage remarkably dense and 
strong. They are gregarious, except during the breeding season, easily 
domesticated, and their flesh generally good ; breed more than once 
during the season, and feed on grain or on the leaves and soft parts of 
vegetables, according to circumstances. In disposition they are timid 
and watchful, but rather pugnacious among themselves.—Ep. 

