PASSENGER PIGEON. 
195 
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. 
characterized the Passenger Pigeons under the name of Ectopistes, at once 
distinguished by their graceful and lengthened make, and well represented by 
the common Columba migratoria and the Carolina Pigeon of our author. The 
nicer distinctions will be found in the slender bill, and the relative proportions 
of the feet and wings. As far as our knowledge extends, the group is confined 
to both the continents of America. A single individual of this species was 
shot, while perched on a wall, in the neighbourhood of a pigeon-house at 
Westhall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, in December, 1825. It came 
into the possession of Dr Fleming of Flisk, who has recorded its occurrence in 
his British Zoology. He remarks, that the feathers were quite fresh and 
entire, like a wild bird ; but we can only rank it as a very rare straggler. 
Mr Audubon mentions having brought over 350 of these birds, when he last 
visited this country, and distributed them among different country gentlemen. 
Lord Stanley received fifty of them, which he intended to turn out in his park, 
in the neighbourhood of Liverpool. 
We have the following additional account from Audubon, of their flights, 
roosting, and destruction, in every thing corroborating the history of Wilson, 
but too interesting to pass by : — 
“ Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over an 
astonishing extent of country in a very short time. 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 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, 
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. 
“ In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of 
the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens, a few miles 
beyond Hardensburgh, I observed the Pigeons flying from northeast to south- 
west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before. I 
travelled on, and still met more, the farther I proceeded. The air was 
literally filled with Pigeons. The light of the noon day was obscured as by 
an eclipse. The dung fell in spots not unlike melting flakes of snow ; and the 
continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose. 
“ Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh fifty-five 
