40 
THE PURRE. 
gious slaughter among them ; while, as the showers of their com- 
panions fall, the whole body often alight, or descend to the surface 
with them, till the sportsman is completely satiated with destruc- 
tion. On some of these occasions, while crowds of victims are 
fluttering along the sand, the small Pigeon Hawk, constrained by 
necessity, ventures to make a sweep among the dead in presence 
of the proprietor, but as suddenly pays for his temerity with his life! 
Sucli a tyi ant is man, when vested with power and unrestrained by 
the dread of responsibility. 
The Purre is eight inches in length, and fifteen inches in 
extent; the bill is black, straight, or slightly bent downwards, 
about an inch and a half long, very thick at the base, and taper- 
ing to a slender blunt point at the extremity ; eye very small, iris 
daik hazel ; cheeks grey ; line over the eye, belly and vent white; 
back and scapulars of an ashy brown, marked here and there with 
spots of black bordered with bright ferruginous ; sides of the rump 
white ; tail-coverts olive, centred with black ; chin white ; neck 
below gray ; breast and sides thinly marked with pale spots of 
dusky, in some pure wdiite ; wings black, edged and tipt with white; 
two middle tail-feathers dusky, the rest brown ash, edged with 
white ; legs and feet black ; toes bordered with a very narrow 
scallopped membrane. The usual broad band of white crossing 
the wing, forms a distinguishing characteristic of almost the whole 
genus. 
On examining more than a hundred of these birds they varied 
considerably in the black and ferruginous spots on the back and 
scapulars ; some were altogether plain, while others were thickly 
marked, particularly on the scapulars, with a red rust color, cen- 
tred with black. The females were uniformly more plain than 
the males ; but many of the latter, probably young birds, were 
destitute of the ferruginous spots. On the twenty-fourth of May, 
the eggs in the females were about the size of partridge shot. In 
