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THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 
I have commenced my description of this species with the above account 
of its flight, because the most important facts connected with its habits 
relate to its migrations. These are entirely owing to the necessity of 
procuring food, and are not performed with the view of escaping the severity 
of a northern latitude, or of seeking a southern one for the purpose of 
breeding. They consequently do not take place at any fixed period or 
season of the year. Indeed, it sometimes happens that a continuance of a 
sufficient supply of food in one district will keep these birds absent from 
another for years. I know, at least, to a certainty, that in Kentucky they 
remained for several years constantly, and were nowhere else to be found. 
They all suddenly disappeared one season when the mast was exhausted, 
and did not return for a long period. Similar facts have been observed in 
other States. 
Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over an 
astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved by facts 
well known. Thus, Pigeons have been killed in the neighbourhood of New 
York, with their crops full of rice, which they must have collected in 
the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these districts being the nearest in which 
they could possibly have procured a supply of that kind of food. As their 
power of digestion is so great that they will decompose food entirely in 
twelve hours, they must in this case have travelled between three and 
four hundred miles in six hours, which shews their speed to be at an average 
of about one mile in a minute. A velocity such as this would enable 
one of these birds, were it so inclined, to visit the European continent in 
less than three days. 
This great power of flight is seconded by as great a power of vision, 
which enables them, as they travel at that swift rate, to inspect the country 
below, discover their food with facility, and thus attain the object for which 
their journey has been undertaken. This I have also proved to be the case, 
by having observed them, when passing over a sterile part of the country, or 
one scantily furnished with food suited to them, keep high in the air, flying 
with an extended front, so as to enable them to survey hundreds of acres at 
once. On the contrary, when the land is richly covered with food, or the 
trees abundantly hung with mast, they fly low, in order to discover the part 
most plentifully supplied. 
Their body is of an elongated oval form, steered by a long well-plumed 
tail, and propelled by well-set wings, the muscles of which are very lai'ge 
and powerful for the size of the bird. When an individual is seen gliding 
through the woods and close to the observer, it passes like a thought, and on 
trying to see it again, the eye searches in vain ; the bird is gone. 
The multitudes of Wild Pigeons in our woods are astonishing. Indeed, 
