Oh! will they say, as rosy day is dying,
And shadows fall,
"Come, let us speak of her now lowly lying,
She loved us all!"
And will a gentle tear-drop, then replying,
From some eye fall?
Give me, oh! give me not the echo ringing
From trump of fame;
Be mine, be mine the pearls from fond 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.
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 largest one is the line upon which the birds migrate.
In Canada their numbers are so great, and the ravages which they commit upon the cultivated ground so extensive, that instances are recorded in which the bishop has been seriously and earnestly implored to exorcise them "by bell, book, and candle"—to cast them out of the land by the same means used in days of yore against spirits troublesome to other individuals, men and women. But as the Passengers were material and not spiritual, the bishop had the good sense not to try the experiment upon them. At least, La Houton, who records the matter, is perfectly silent as to the success or failure of the proposition.