WHITE-CROWNED PIGEON. 363 
and is very abundant in the island of Porto Rico, frequenting 
deep woods, and breeding on rocks, whence they are called 
by some rock pigeons. They are very numerous on all the 
Bahama Islands, and form an important article of food with 
the inhabitants, particularly when young, being then taken in 
ereat quantities from the rocks where they breed. On the 
Florida keys also they breed in large societies, and the young 
are much sought after by the wreckers. They there feed 
principally on berries, and especially on those of a tree called 
sweetwood. When the fruit of this is ripe, they become fat 
and well-flavoured, but other fruits again make their flesh 
very bitter. 
Buffon, in accordance with his whimsical idea of referring 
foreign species to those of Europe, considers the present as a 
variety of the biset (Columba livia, Briss.) To that bird it is 
in fact allied, both in form and plumage, and has, moreover, 
the same habit of breeding in holes and crevices of rocks ; but 
it is, at the same time, entirely distinct. 
The size of the white-crowned pigeon has been underrated 
by authors. Its length is fourteen inches, and its extent 
twenty-three ; the bill is one inch long, carmine red at the 
base, the end from the nostrils being bluish white; the irides 
are orange yellow, the bare circle round the eye, dusky white, 
becoming red in the breeding season; the entire crown, in- 
cluding all the feathers advancing far on the bill, is white, 
with a tinge of cream colour, and is narrowly margined with 
black, which passes insensibly into the general deep slate 
colour: on the nape of the neck is a small deep purplish 
space changing to violet ; the remainder of the neck above, 
and on the sides, is covered by scale-like feathers, bright green, 
with bluish and golden reflections, according as the light 
falls; the sides of the head, the body above, and whole inferior 
surface, the wings and tail above and beneath—in short, the 
whole bird, without any exception but the parts described, is 
of a uniform deep bluish slate, much lighter on the belly, 
more tinged with blue on the stout-shafted rump-feathers, 
