2 
PIGEON TRIBE. 
from Mexico to Hudson Bay, in which inhospitable region 
it is seen even in December, weathering the severity of the 
climate with indifference, and supporting itself upon the 
meagre buds of the juniper when the ground is hidden by 
inundating snows. To the west it is found to the base of the 
Northern Andes, or Rocky Mountains, but does not appear 
to be known beyond this natural barrier to its devious 
wanderings. As might be supposed from its extraordinary 
history, it is formed with peculiar strength of wing, moving 
through the air with extreme rapidity, urging its flight also by 
quick and very muscular strokes. During the season of 
amorous address it often flies out in numerous hovering cir- 
cles ; and while thus engaged, the tips of the great wing- 
feathers are heard to strike against each other so as to produce 
a very audible sound. 
The almost incredible and unparalleled associations which 
the species form with each other appear to have no relation 
with the usual motives to migration among other birds. A 
general and mutual attachment seems to occasion this congre- 
gating propensity. Nearly the whole species, which at any one 
time inhabit the continent, are found together in the same 
plade ; they do not fly from climate, as they are capable of 
enduring its severity and extremes. They are even found to 
breed in the latitude of 51 degrees, round Hudson Bay and 
the interior of New Hampshire, as well as in the 3 2d degree in 
the dense forests of the great valley of the Mississippi. The 
accidental situation of their food alone directs all their move- 
ments ; while this continues to be supplied they sometimes 
remain sedentary in a particular district, as in the dense forests 
of Kentucky, where the great body remained for years in suc- 
cession, and were scarcely elsewhere to be found ; and here, 
at length, when the mast happened to fail, they disappeared 
for several years. 
The rapidity of flight, so necessary in their vast domestic 
movements, is sufficiently remarkable. The Pigeons kdled 
near the city of New York have been found with their crops 
full of rice collected in the plantations of Georgia or Carolina ; 
