RICE BUNTING. 
171 
but regularly to breed, and rear their young, where rice never 
was, and probably never will be cultivated? Their so recent ar- 
rival on this part of the continent I believe to be altogether 
imaginary, because, though there were not a single grain of rice 
cultivated within the United States, the country produces an 
exuberance of food of which they are no less fond. Insects of 
various kinds, grubs, may-flies and caterpillars, the young ears of 
Indian corn, and the seeds of the wild oats, or, as it is called in 
Pennsylvania, reeds, (the Zizania aquatica of Linnaeus) which 
grows in prodigious abundance along the marshy shores of our 
large rivers, furnish, not only them, but millions of Rail, with 
a delicious subsistence for several weeks. I do not doubt, how- 
ever, that the introduction of rice, but more particularly the pro- 
gress of agriculture in this part of America, has greatly increased 
their numbers, by multiplying their sources of subsistence fifty 
fold within the same extent of country. 
In the month of April, or very early in May, the Rice Bun- 
ting, male and female, in the dresses in which they are figured 
on the plate, arrive within the southern boundaries of the Uni- 
ted States; and are seen around the town of Savannah, in Geor- 
gia, about the fourth of May, sometimes in separate parties of 
males and females; but more generally promiscuously. They 
remain there but a short time; and about the twelfth of May 
make their appearance in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, as 
they did at Savannah. While here the males are extremely gay 
and full of song; frequenting meadows, newly ploughed fields, 
sides of creeks, rivers, and watery places, feeding on may-flies 
and caterpillars, of which they destroy great quantities. In 
their passage, however, through Virginia at this season, they 
do great damage to the early wheat and barley, while in its 
milky state. About the twentieth of May they disappear on 
their way to the north. Nearly at the same time they arrive in 
the state of New York, spread over the whole New England 
states as far as the river St. Lawrence from lake Ontario to the 
sea; in all of which places north of Pennsylvania they remain 
during the summer, building, and rearing their young. The 
