Species III. EMBERIZA ORYZIVOBA. 
RICE BUNTING. 
[Plate XII. Figs. 1 and 2.] 
Emberiza oryzivora, Linn. Syst. p. 311, 16. — -Lc Ortolan de la Caroline, Briss. 
Orn. m., p. 282, 8, pi. 15, fig. 3. PL Enl. 388, fig. l.—L'Agripenne, on. JJ Ortolan 
de Riz, Buff. Ois. it., p. 337. — Rice-bird, Catesb. Car. i., pi. 14. — Edw. pi. 2. — 
Latham ir., p. 188, No. 25. 
This is the Bobolink of the Eastern and Northern States, and the 
Rice and Reed-bird of Pennsylvania and the Southern States. Though 
small in size, he is not so in consequence; his coming is hailed by the 
sportsman with pleasure ; while the careful planter looks upon him as a 
devouring scourge, and worse than a plague of locusts. Three good 
qualities, however, entitle him to our notice, particularly as these three 
are rarely found in the same individual ; — his plumage is beautiful, his 
song highly musical, and his flesh excellent. I might also add, that the 
immense range of his migrations, and the havoc he commits, are not the 
least interesting parts of his history. 
The winter residence of this species I suppose to be from Mexico to 
the mouth of the Amazon, from whence in hosts innumerable he regu- 
larly issues every spring, perhaps to both hemispheres, extending his 
migrations northerly as far as the banks of the Illinois and the shores 
of the St. Lawrence. Could the fact be ascertained, which has been 
asserted by some writers, that the emigration of these birds was 
altogether unknown in this part of the continent, previous to the intro- 
duction of rice plantations, it would certainly be interesting. Yet, why 
should these migrations reach at least a thousand miles beyond those 
places where rice is 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, though 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, fur- 
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