her parts of the kingdom, and is comparatively common among
the mountains of Norway, have I known it in any instance to spread anew
over the tracts from which it had been extirpated. So much for the
general reasonings of Dr. Kitto. Further, we find him stating, that a
deluge which could overspread the region inhabited by birds so widely
diffused as the raven and the dove, could hardly have been less than
universal. The doctor, however, ought to have known that the _dove_ is a
_family_, not a _species_. All the American species of doves, for
example, differ from the six European species, three of which are to be
found in Scotland. Of even the American passenger pigeons (_Ectopistes
migratoria_), which occur in such numbers in their native country as
actually to eclipse, during their migratory flights, the light of day,
only a single straggler,--the one whose chance visit has been recorded
by Dr. Fleming,--seems to have been ever seen in Britain. And the East
has also its own peculiar species, unknown to Europe. The golden-green
pigeons and the great crowned pigeons of the Indian isles are never seen
in northern and western latitudes, save in stuffed specimens in a
museum. The Vinago pigeons, with their vividly bright plumes, though
they exist in several species, are all restricted to the woods of the
torrid zone. Even the collared dove of Africa and the Levant rarely
visits, and then only as a straggler, the western and northern parts of
Europe. The blue-capped turteline pigeon is restricted, as a species, to
the island of Celebes; the blue and green turteline pigeon is a native
of New Guinea; the Cape turtle occurs in but the southern parts of
Africa; the Nicobar ground pigeon in but the Indian Archipelago; the
magnificent fruit pigeon in the eastern parts of Australia; and the
crowned goura pigeon, the giant of its family, in the Molucca Islands.
No single species of dove seems to be so widely spread but that it might
be exterminated in a merely partial deluge; and of course conjecture may
in vain weary itself in striving to determine what that particular
species was which Noah sent forth as a messenger from the ark, or in
inquiring what was the extent of the area which it occupied? The common
raven is more widely spread than any single species of pigeon. Even the
raven, however, seems restricted to the northern hemisphere. India and
Southern Africa have both their ravens; but the species differ from each
other, and from