20 
WHITE-CROWNED PIGEON. 
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 sweet-wood. When the fruit 
of this is ripe they become fat and well flavoured, but other fruits 
again make their flesh very bitter. 
Buffon, in accordance with his whimsical idea of referring 
foreign species to those of Europe, considers the present as a 
variety of the Biset (Columba 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, including 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 
