THE PURRE. 
139 
of their companions fall, the whole body often alight, or descend 
to the surface with them, till the sportsman is completely sa- 
tiated with destruction. 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 ex- 
tent; the bill is black, straight, or slightly bent downwards, 
about an inch and a half long, very thick at the base, and taper- 
ing 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, centred 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 tipt with white; two middle tail feathers dusky, the 
rest brown ash, edged with white; legs and feet black; toes 
bordered with a very narrow 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 
considerably in the black and ferruginous spots on the back and 
scapulars; some were altogether plain, while others were thickly 
marked, particularly on the scapulars, with a red rust colour, 
centred 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. 
