[85] “Length 16 inches, expanse 24, tail 5³⁄₄, tarsus 1, middle toe 1³⁄₁₀. Irides brilliant orange; orbits carmine; beak black; feet coral-red. Crown, sides of head, and fore-neck, obscure reddish-purple; throat white. Back of neck splendid purplish green; back, rump, thighs, and parts beneath the wings, pale blue. Basal half of tail pale blue, gradually merging into a blackish-blue bar, nearly an inch broad, which crosses the feathers; thence to the tip, greyish-blue. Wing quills blackish brown, the first five edged with white; coverts towards the back, and the pinion [winglet?], dull olive; the rest of a very dull blue. Breast and belly dull reddish-brown. Weight 10oz. 2dr”—(Robinson, MSS., ii. 114, abridged.) Of all our Doves, none is so exclusively arboreal as this. The Bald-pate, the Blue Pigeon, and the Ring-tail are essentially tree-doves, but I have seen the first feeding on the ground, and the second is often seen running; but all who are acquainted with this bird’s haunts and habits concur in affirming that he is never seen to put his feet upon the earth. Though it is probable that he must occasionally procure gravel, to aid in the comminution of his hard food, and that, when the resources of the wild-pines are exhausted in the long droughts, he must descend to drink at the mountain ponds, or gully springs, it seems that he cautiously selects his occasion, when unwitnessed by human eyes. And yet it is said not to be a shy bird, nor, at certain times, difficult to obtain by those who have made themselves acquainted with its habits. It inhabits the most recluse and dense mountain forests, where few are able to follow it, but the negro fowlers. The penetration of steep mountain-woods, abounding in prickly bushes, and tangled, beyond all description, by twining and pendent lianes, many of which are formidably spinous, where there is nothing like a pathway, and the ground is strewn with enormous masses of honey-combed limestone, over whose sharp points the hunter must often climb at the risk of his neck,—or with a loose rubble that slips from beneath the feet, and causes continual falls, is an enterprise that demands no small degree of courage, temper, and perseverance. The naked feet of the negroes catch hold of the rocky projections, almost like the hind hands of the monkey, and they can proceed with rapid and noiseless step; while the shoes of the white man, in his slow and painful progress, betray, by the displacing of stones, and the crackling of twigs, his approach to the wary bird, while yet far away. The musquitoes also, that, thirsting for blood, and swarming in such situations, dance around his face with their maddening hum, and soon inflame head, hand, and foot with their pungent stings, make a tyro long to be out again, almost before he has lost sight of the open sky of the clearing. But it is the presence of these most annoying insects, which affords an opportunity of obtaining the highly prized