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PASSENGER PIGEON. 
Columba migratoria, FLEMING. YARRELL. 
Eciopistes migratorius, SELBY, 
Columba—A Pigeon, Migratoria— Migratory. 
Tuts Pigeon, far-famed on account of its extraordinary 
numbers, is a native of North America, from north to south. 
Captain Sir John Ross, R.N., mentions one which flew on 
board the Victory in Baflin’s Bay, during a storm, in the 
734 degree of latitude, on the 3lst. of July, 1829. It has 
been taken also in Europe, in Russia and Norway; and one 
was shot, while perched on a wall near a dove-cote, at West- 
hall, in the parish of Monymeal, Fifeshire, Scotland, on the 
3ist. of December, 1825. 
The Passenger Pigeon, as imported by its name, is of 
migratory habits in its native country. 
These birds may be kept in confinement, and a pair built 
and hatched their young in the menagerie of the Zoological 
Society in the year 1833, and another pair about the same 
time in that of Lord Derby, at Knowsley, in Lancashire. In 
their native regions their numbers seem to be almost incredibly 
vast; for miles and miles and miles flock follows after flock, 
and that so fast as scarcely to be able to be reckoned as 
they pass; Audubon counted one hundred and sixty-three 
flocks in twenty-one minutes. If a Hawk threatens them, 
their movements, he says, are singularly beautiful, as they 
wheel with the force of a torrent and a noise like thunder 
with inconceivable velocity in various changing figures, the 
whole mass gliding through the air as if a single living body. 
He gives a surprising account of the numbers in which, in 
their peregrinations, they are captured in the easiest manner 
in consequence of their dense propinquity to each other, and 
