196 PASSENGER PIGEON. 



in the bounds allotted to this account, to relate all I have seen 

 and heard of this species, yet no circumstance shall be omitted 

 with which I am acquainted (however extraordinary some of 

 these may appear) that may tend to illustrate its history. 



family, Mr Swainson has characterised the passenger pigeons under the 

 name of Ectopistes, at once distinguished by their graceful and lengthened 

 make, and well represented by the common Cohtmba migratoria and the 

 Carolina pigeon of our author. The nicer distinctions ■will be found in 

 the slender bill, and the relative proportions of the feet and wings. As 

 far as our knowledge extends, the group is confined to both the continents 

 of America. A single individual of this species was shot, while perched 

 on a wall, in the neighbourhood of a pigeon-house at Westhall, in the 

 parish of Monymail, Fifeshire, in December 1825. It came into the 

 possession of Dr Fleming of Flisk, who has recorded its occurrence in his 

 " British Zoology." He remarks that the feathers were quite fresh and 

 entire, like a wild bird ; but we can only rank it as a very rare straggler. 



Mr Audubon .mentions having brought over 350 of these birds, when 

 he last visited this country, and distributed them among different 

 country gentlemen. Lord Stanley received fifty of them, which he 

 intended to turn out in his park, in the neighbourhood of Liverpool. 



We have the following additional account from Audubon of their 

 flights, roosting, and destruction, in everything corroborating the history 

 of Wilson, but too interesting to pass by : — 



" Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over 

 an astonishing extent of country in a very short time. Thus pigeons 

 have been killed in the neighbourhood of New York, with their crops 

 full of rice, which they must have collected in the fields of Georgia and 

 Carolina, these districts being the nearest in which they could possibly 

 have procured a supply of food. As their power of digestion is so great 

 that they will decompose food entirely in twelve hours, they must, in 

 this case, have travelled between three and four hundred miles in six 

 hours, which shows their speed to be, at an average, about one mile in 

 a minute. A velocity such as this would enable one of these birds, 

 were it so inclined, to visit the European continent in less than three days. 



" In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Henderson, on the banks 

 of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens, a 

 few miles beyond Hardensburg, I observed the pigeons flying from 

 north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever 

 seen them before. I travelled on, and still met more, the farther I 

 proceeded. The air was literally filled with pigeons. The light of the 

 noonday was obscured as by an eclipse. The dung fell in spots not 

 unlike melting flakes of snow ; and the continued buzz of wings had a 

 tendency to lull my senses to repose. 



