HERMIT THRUSH. 
189 
the rich silky blue on the crown, and much of the splendour 
of the neck ; the tail is also somewhat shorter, and the white, 
with which it is marked, less pure.* 
HERMIT THRUSH TURDUS SOLITARIUS. 
Plate XLIII. Fig. 2. 
Little Thrush, Catesby , i. 81 Edwards, 296 — Brown Thrush, Arct. Zool, 337. 
No. 199 Peale's Museum, No. 3542. 
TURD US SOLITARIUS. — WiLSON.f 
Turdus minor, Bonap. Synop. p. 75. — The Hermit Thrush, Aud. Orn. Biog. 
i. p. 308, pi. 58, male and female. 
The dark solitary cane and myrtle swamps of the 
southern states are the favourite native haunts of this silent 
and recluse species ; and the more deep and gloomy these are, 
the more certain we are to meet with this bird flitting among 
them. This is the species mentioned in the first volume of 
this work, while treating of the Wood Thrush, as having 
been figured and described, more than fifty years ago, by 
Edwards, from a dried specimen sent him by my friend 
Mr William Bartram, under the supposition that it was the 
* In addition to their history by Wilson, Audubon mentions, that though 
regularly migrating in numbers, they are never in such vast extent as the 
Passenger Pigeon, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred being consi- 
dered a large flock. He also mentions them differing in another more 
important particular — the manner of roosting. They prefer sitting among the 
long grass of abandoned fields, at the foot of the dry stalks of maize, and only 
occasionally resort to the dead foliage of trees, or the different species of 
evergreens. They do not sit near each other, but are dispersed over the field, 
whereas the Passenger Pigeon roosts in compact masses, on limbs of trees. 
In every respect, they run more into the Ground Doves, or Bronze-winged 
Pigeons, which similarity some parts of the plumage will strengthen Ed. 
f Bonaparte has wished to restore Gmelin’s old name of minor to this bird, 
which Wilson had thought in some manner erroneous, on account of solitarius 
being preoccupied by another species. That, however, will rank in the genus 
Petrocincla ; and Mr Swainson has since described a small species under 
the name of minor — Ed. 
