RICE BUNTIKG 



49 



now planted ; and this not in occasional excursions, but regularly 

 to breed, and rear their young, where rice never was, and probably 

 never will be cultivated? Their so recent arrival on this part of 

 the continent I believe to be altogether imaginary, because, tho 

 there were not a single grain of rice cultivated within the United 

 States, the country produces an exuberance of food of which they 

 are no less fond. Insects of various kinds, grubs, May-flies and 

 caterpillars, the young ears of Indian corn, and the seeds of the 

 wild oats, or, as it is called in Pennsylvania, reeds, (the zizania 

 aquatica of Linnaeus) which grows in prodigious abundance along 

 the marshy shores of our large rivers, furnish, not only them, but 

 millions of Rail, with a delicious subsistence for several weeks. I 

 do not doubt, however, that the introduction of rice, but more par- 

 ticularly the progress of agriculture in this part of America, has 

 greatly increased their numbers, by multiplying their sources of 

 subsistence fifty fold within the same extent of country. 



In the month of April, or very early in May, the Rice Bun- 

 ting, male and female, in the dresses in which they are figured on 

 the plate, arrive within the southern boundaries of the United 

 States ; and are seen around the town of Savannah, in Georgia, 

 about the fourth of May, sometimes in separate parties of males 

 and females; but more generally promiscuously. They remain 

 there but a short time; and about the twelfth of May make their 

 appearance in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, as they did at Sa- 

 vannah. While here the males are extremely gay and full of song; 

 frequenting meadows, newly ploughed fields, sides of creeks, rivers, 

 and watery places, feeding on May-flies and caterpillars, of which 

 they destroy great quantities. In their passage, however, thro Vir- 

 ginia at this season, they do great damage to the early wheat and 

 barley, while in its milky state. About the twentieth of May they 

 disappear on their way to the north. Nearly at the same time 

 they arrive in the state of New York, spread over the whole New 

 England states as far as the river St. Lawrence from lake Ontario 



VOL. II. N 



