adopted home. If they descend into the plain, it is to collect subsistence; but they resort to the low grounds more in winter than summer, as they avoid the heat and dislike to wander from their cool retreats. They never roost in the woods like crows; and have sufficient sagacity to choose in their rocky retreats a situation defended from the winds of the north, commonly under the natural vault formed by an extending ledge or cavity of the rock. Here they retire during the night in companies of fifteen to twenty. They perch upon the bushes which grow straggling in the clefts of the rocks; but they form their nests in the rocky crevices, or in the holes of the mouldering walls, at the summits of ruined towers; and sometimes upon the high branches of large and solitary trees. After they have paired, their fidelity appears to continue through life. The male expresses his attachment by a particular strain of croaking, and they are often observed caressing by approaching their bills, with as much semblance of affection as the truest turtle doves.

The Crow (Corvus corone) is also abundant in California. The Magpie (Corvus pica) is a California bird.

This bird, says Nuttall, is much more common in Europe than in America, being confined in this country to the northern regions, and to the plains and table lands or steppes of the Rocky Mountains west of the Mississippi. Thence they continue to the banks of the Columbia, and on the opposite side of northern and temperate Asia, are found in Kamschatka, Japan, and China. They are sometimes met with as far down the Missouri as Boonsborough in the severity of winter, driven from the western wilderness, only by the imperious calls of hunger. In

summer they are so rare, even in the Missouri territory, that from March to October, and from St. Louis to the trading house at the Mandans, a distance by the river of sixteen hundred miles, a party of near seventy men, attended by constant hunters, never met with a single Pie, nor were any appearances of their nests any where visible. Eleven hundred miles up the Arkansas, and more than one thousand up the Red River, countries which I visited in summer, never presented a specimen of this otherwise familiar and roving bird. The season of incubation with the American Pies, so different from their familiar habits in the old continent, is passed, no doubt, in the wooded recesses of the Rocky Mountains, which abound with berries and acorns, and with small birds and their eggs. They are known to make so great a destruction among the eggs of grouse, pheasants, partridges, and even among young chickens, in many parts of

Europe, as to be proscribed by law, and destroyed for the premium justly set upon their heads. The absence of food and shelter for their nests in summer, suitable for the Magpie, on the vast prairies of the Arkansas and Missouri, particularly in the dry deserts at the base of the Rocky Mountains, will probably continue as a perpetual barrier to the eastern migrations of this mischievous species, whose means of flight and travelling are still more circumscribed than those of the common crow. They consequently experience annually, in the terrible vicissitudes of climate incident to the countries they inhabit; like the Esquimaux of the Arctic regions, either a feast or a famine, and are rendered so bold and voracious by want, that in the vicinity of the northern Andes, towards New Mexico, Colonel Pike was visited by them in the month of December, in latitude 41°, while the thermometer was at the dreadful line of 17° below zero, on the scale of Reaumur. They now assembled round the miserable party in great numbers for the purpose of picking the sore backs of their perishing horses, and, like the vulture of Prometheus, they did not await the death of the subjects they tormented, but fed upon them still living, till their flesh was raw and bleeding. They were so bold and

familiar as to alight on the out of their hands.*

men's arms, and eat flesh

To the party of Lewis and Clark, the Magpies were also very familiar and voracious, so that they penetrated into their tents, and without ceremony, like the harpies of Virgil, snatched the meat even from the dishes, preferring the chance of any death

Pike's Journal, p. 170.

29*

to that of hunger. They were also frequent attendants on the hunters, and while these were engaged in dressing and skinning their game, the Pies would venture to seize the meat suspended within a foot or two of their heads.

The Blue Jay (Garrulus cristatus) and the (Garrulus Stelleri) according to Farnham, are quite common.

Of the Woodpeckers, the (Colaptes Mexicanus), and the Flicker or Golden-winged Woodpecker, (Colaptes auratus), are the only ones found in California.

The latter breeds and inhabits throughout North America, from Labrador and the remotest wooded regions of the fur countries to Florida, being partially migratory only from Canada and the Northern States,

proceeding to the south in October, and returning north in April. From the great numbers seen in the Southern States in winter, it is evident that the principal part of the species migrate thither from the North and West to pass the inclement season, which naturally deprives them of the means of acquiring their usual sustenance, At this time also they feed much on winter berries, such as those of the sumach, smilax, and misseltoe. In the Middle States, some of these birds find the means of support through the most inclement months of the winter. In New England, they reappear about the beginning of April, soon after which they commence to pair and build; for this pur