348 
THE PURRE. 
smoke, varying in form and appearance every instant, while it performs 
its evolutions in air. As this cloud descends, and courses along the 
shores of the ocean, with great rapidity, in a kind of waving serpen- 
tine flight, alternately throwing its dark and white plumage to the eye, 
it forms a very grand and interesting appearance. At such times the 
gunners make prodigious slaughter among them ; while, as the showers 
of their companions fall, the whole body often alight, or descend to the 
surface with them, till the sportsman is completely satiated with de- 
struction. 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 presence of the 
proprietor, but as suddenly pays for his temerity with his life ! Such a 
tyrant is man, when vested with power, and unrestrained 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 tapering to a slender blunt point 
at the extremity ; eye very small, iris dark hazel ; cheeks gray ; 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 gray ; breast and sides thinly marked 
with pale spots of dusky, in some pure white ; wings black, edged and 
tipped with Avhite ; two middle tail feathers dusky, the rest brown ash, 
edged with white ; legs and feet black ; toes bordered with a very nar- 
row scalloped 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 con- 
siderably in the black and ferruginous spots on the back and scapulars ; 
some were altogether plain, while others were thickly marked, particu- 
larly on the scapulars, with a red rust color, centered with black. The 
females were uniformly more plain than the males ; but many of the 
latter, probably young birds, were destitute 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 unknown. 
