eyes springing,
_This_, would I claim.
Oh! may I think such memories _will_ be clinging
Around my name.
GRETTA.

GAME-BIRDS OF AMERICA.--NO. IX.

[Illustration: PASSENGER PIGEON.]

This bird, the marvel of the whole Pigeon race, is beautiful in its
colors, graceful in its form, and far more a child of wild nature than
any other of the pigeons. The chief wonder, however, is in its
multitudes; multitudes which no man can number; and when Alexander
Wilson lays the mighty wand of the enchanter upon the Valley of the
Mississippi, and conjures it up to the understanding and the feeling
of the reader, with far more certain and more concentrated and
striking effect than if it were painted on canvas, or modeled in wax,
these pigeons form a feature in it which no one who knows can by
possibility forget. It is probable that the multitudes may not be more
numerous than those of the petrels in Bass's Strait, of which Captain
Flinders--who also was a kind of Wilson in his way--gives a graphic
description. But vast as the multitude of these was, it was only as a
passing cloud to the captain; he was unable to follow it up; and even
though he had, the flight of birds over the surface of the sea is tame
and storyless, as compared with the movements of the unnumbered
myriads of these pigeons in the great central valley of our continent.
None of the names which have been bestowed upon this species are
sufficiently, or at all, descriptive of it. Passenger, the English
expression, and _Migratoria_, the Latin name, fall equally short,
inasmuch as every known pigeon is to a greater or less extent
migratory as well as this one. The "swarm" pigeon, the "flood" pigeon,
or even the "deluge" pigeon would be a more appropriate appellation;
for the weight of their numbers breaks down the forest with scarcely
less havoc than if the stream of the Mississippi were poured upon it.

Birds so numerous demand both a wide pasture and powerful means of
migration, and the Passengers are not stinted in either of those
respects. In latitude, their pasture extends from the thirtieth to the
sixtieth degree, which is upward of two thousand miles; and the
extensive breadth in longitude cannot be estimated at less than
fifteen hundred. Three millions of square miles is thus the extent of
territory of which the Passenger pigeon has command; and that
territory has its dimensions so situated as that the large