Order COLUMB^*. 
Bill with the basal half straight and soft, covered with a *eshy skin, in which the nostrils 
are placed ; the tip homy, curved, and vaulted inside ; gape wide and smooth. Wings pomted, 
of 10 feathers. Tail variable in the number of its feathers, usually of 12 or 14, m some 
16. Legs short, feathered to the knee ; the tarsus fleshy and very stout, scutate in front, except 
in one elnus. Toes stout, flattened beneath, forming a broad sole. 
Sternum narrow, with a high keel, and two notches on each side of it in the posterior 
margin ; chest with a large double crop. 
Fam. COLUMBIDa®. 
Bill rather narrow, the gape moderately wide, the horny tip less in extent than the fleshy 
base , nostrils opening to the front. Wings pointed. Tail broad, short, and even m some, long 
and graduated in others, of 12 feathers. Tarsus somewhat lengthened and not very stoii . 
Toes lengthened ; lateral toes suhequal ; the hallux moderately short. 
Of both terrestrial and arboreal habits. 
Genus PALTJMBTJS. 
Bill moderately stout, the tip well curved; nostrils placed in a groove and beneath a 
capacious memhiune. Wings with the 
PALTIMBUS TOBRINGTONIiE. 
(THE CEYLON WOOD-PIGEON.) 
(Peculiar to Ceylon.) 
PahmJim elfhimtom, var„ Blyth, J. A, S. B. 1851, xx. p. 178^ ^ 
Palumbm torringtonii, Kelaart, Prodromus, Faun. Zeylan. p. 1 { h 
iii. p. 466 (1864); Elyth, Ibis, 1867, p. S06; Hume, Nests and 
. Carpophaga {Pabimbus) torriligtonu (Keh), ft elphinstonn, var., aput y , 
Cat. p. 130 (1852). 
its focus, as Mr. Wallace, in 
* This interesting order of birds is chiefly developed inthe grea region, comprised of New Guinea, the 
his able article on the Pigeons (Ibis, 1865), terms it, being in t e us r^ that out of the three hundred and odd 
island of Celebes, and the Solomon Islands. In the article in ^ other hand, others have since been discovered) 
.species known, no less than 118 (some of these are now uni ec , there arc only 80, and in Africa less than 40, 
inhabit the Malay Archipelago, while on the vast J? . distribution of Pigeons are as follows : These 
Australia possessmg 43. Mr. Wallace’s remarks on is metropolis of the Pigeon tribe. It is now well known, how- 
numbers show that the Malay Archipelago is preeminently the metropol 
