AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 
ORDER IV. COLUMB^. COLUMBINE. 
GENUS 48. COLUMBA. PIGEON. 
SPECIES 1 . C. MIGRATORIJi. 
PASSENGER PIGEON. 
[Plate XLIV.— Fig. 1.] 
Catesb. I, 23. — Linn. Syst. 285. — Turton, 479. — Arct. Zool. 
p. 322, JVb. 187. — Brisson, i, 100. — Buff, ir, 527. — Peale’s 
Museum, JV*o. 5084.* 
This remarkable bird merits a distinguished place in the an- 
nals of our feathered tribes; a claim to which I shall endeavour 
to do justice; and though it would be impossible, in the bounds 
allotted to this account, to relate all I have seen and heard of 
this species, yet no circumstance shall be omitted with which 
I am acquainted, (however extraordinary some of these may 
appear) that may tend to illustrate its history. 
The Wild Pigeon of the United States inhabits a wide and 
extensive region of North America, on this side of the Great 
Stony mountains, beyond which to the westward, I have not 
heard of their being seen. According to Mr. Hutchins, they 
abound in the country round Hudson’s Bay, where they usually 
remain as late as December, feeding, when the ground is cov- 
ered with snow, on the buds of juniper. They spread over the 
whole of Canada— were seen by captain Lewis and his party 
near the Great Falls of the Missouri, upwards of two thousand 
five hundred miles from its mouth, reckoning the meanderings 
* Columba migraloria, Lath. Ind. Orn. p. 612, J^o. 70. 
VOL. III. — B 
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