468 
WHITE-CROWNED PIGEON. 
others, early in spring, where it feeds almost exclusively on a 
kind of wild fruit, usually called beach plum, and some few 
berries of a species of palmetto, that appears to be peculiar to 
those keys. It is also extensively spread in Jamaica and St 
Domingo, and is very abundant in the Island of Porto Rico, 
frequenting deep woods, and breeding on rocks, whence they 
are called by some, rock pigeons. They are very numerous on 
all the Bahama Islands, and form an important article of food 
with the inhabitants, particularly when young, being then 
taken in great quantities from the rocks where they breed. On 
the Florida keys also they breed in large societies, and the 
young are much sought after by the wreckers. They there 
feed principally on berries, and especially on those of a tree 
called sweetwood. When the fruit of this is ripe, they become 
fat and well-flavoured, but other fruits again make their flesh 
very bitter. 
Buffbn, in accordance with his whimsical idea of referring 
foreign species to those of Europe, considers the present as a 
variety of the biset [Coliimba livia, Briss.) To that bird it is 
in fact allied, both in form and plumage, and has, moreover, 
the same habit of breeding in holes and crevices of rocks ; but 
it is, at the same time, entirely distinct. 
The size of the white-crowned pigeon has been underrated 
by authors. Its length is fourteen inches, and its extent 
twenty-three ; the bill is one inch long, carmine red at the 
base, the end from the nostrils being bluish white ; the irides 
are orange yellow, the bare circle round the eye, dusky white, 
becoming red in the breeding season ; the entire crown, inclu- 
ding all the feathers advancing far on the bill, is white, with a 
tinge of cream colour, and is narrowly margined with black, 
which passes insensibly into the general deep slate colour : on 
the- nape of the neck is a small deep purplish space, changing 
to violet ; the remainder of the neck above, and on the sides, 
is covered by scale-like feathers, bright green, with bluish and 
golden reflections, according as the light falls ; the sides of the 
head, the body above, and whole inferior surface, the wings 
