40 



THE PUREE. 



panions fall, the whole body often alight, or descend to the surface 

 with them, till the sportsman is completely satiated with destruc- 

 tion. On some of those occasions, while crowds of these victims 

 are fluttering along the sand, the small Pigeon Hawk, constrained 

 by necessity, ventures to make a sweep among the dead in pre- 

 sence of the proprietor, but as suddenly pays for his temerity with 

 his life ! Such a tyrant is man, when vested with power and un- 

 restrained by the dread of responsibility. 



The Purre is eight inches in length, and fifteen inches in 

 extent; the bill is black, straight, or slightly bent downwards, 

 about an inch and a half long, very thick at the base, and taper- 

 ing to a slender blunt point at the extremity ; eye very small, iris 

 dark hazel; cheeks grey; line over the eye, belly and vent white; 

 back and scapulars of an ashy brown, marked here and there with 

 spots of black bordered with bright ferruginous; sides of the rump 

 white; tail coverts olive, centered with black; chin white; neck 

 below grey; breast and sides thinly marked with pale spots of 

 dusky, in some pure white ; wings black, edged and tipt with white; 

 two middle tail feathers dusky, the rest brown ash, edged with 

 white; legs and feet black; toes bordered with a very narrow 

 scallopped membrane. The usual broad band of white crossing 

 the wing, forms a distinguishing characteristic of almost the whole 

 genus. 



On examining more than a hundred of these birds they varied 

 considerably in the black and ferruginous spots on the back and 

 scapulars ; some were altogether plain, while others were thickly 

 marked, particularly on the scapulars, with a red rust color, cen- 

 tered with black. The females were uniforn^ily more plain than 

 the males ; but many of the latter, probably young birds, were des- 

 titute of the ferruginous spots. On the twenty-fourth of May the 

 eggs in the females were about the size of partridge shot. In what 

 particular regions of the north these birds breed is altogether un- 

 known. 



