trees which overhang the bazaar, that their noise drowned the Babel of
tongues bargaining for the evening provisions. Hearing of the swarms
which resorted to this spot, I posted myself on a bridge some half mile
distant, and attempted to count the flocks which came from a single
direction to the eastward. About four o'clock in the afternoon,
straggling parties began to wend towards home, and in the course of half
an hour the current fairly set in. But I soon found that I had no longer
distinct flocks to count, it became one living screaming stream. Some
flew high in the air till right above their homes, and dived abruptly
downward with many evolutions till on a level with the trees; others
kept along the ground and dashed close by my face with the rapidity of
thought, their brilliant plumage shining with an exquisite lustre in the
sun-light. I waited on the spot till the evening closed, when I could
hear, though no longer distinguish, the birds fighting for their
perches, and on firing a shot they rose with a noise like the 'rushing
of a mighty wind,' but soon settled again, and such a din commenced as I
shall never forget; the shrill screams of the birds, the fluttering of
their innumerable wings, and the rustling of the leaves of the palm
trees, was almost deafening, and I was glad at last to escape to the
Government Rest House."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Annals of Nat. Hist_. vol xiii. p.263.]

IV. COLUMBIDÆ. _Pigeons_.--Of pigeons and doves there are at least a
dozen species; some living entirely on trees[1] and never alighting on
the ground; others, notwithstanding the abundance of food and warmth,
are migratory[2], allured, as the Singhalese allege, by the ripening of
the cinnamon berries, and hence one species is known in the southern
provinces as the "Cinnamon Dove." Others feed on the fruits of the
banyan: and it is probably to their instrumentality that this marvellous