Male in the second year. Plate XLII. Fig 4.
Irregularly spotted with black, yellow, and reddish orange, on the
head, neck, and back ; the other parts nearly as in the adult male.
THE HONEY LOCUST.
G L E D I T S C H I A T R I A C A N T H O S , Willd. Sp. PI. voL iv. p. 1097- Pursh, Flor. Amer.
vol. i. p. 221. Mich. Arbr. Forest, vol. iii. p. 164. PL 1 0 . — P O L Y G A M I A D H E C I A,
Linn. L E G U M I N O S . E , JUSS.
This tree, when growing in situations most favourable to it, sometimes
attains a height of sixty or eighty feet, and a diameter of three or four.
The bark is detached in large plates, and the trunk is marked with several
broad furrows. The flowers, which are small and of a greenish
colour, are succeeded by long, flat, pendent, generally tortuous pods, of
a brown colour. The wood is very hard, but porous and brittle. This
species is distinguished by its numerous, generally tripartite spines, its
linear-oblong leaflets, and its many-seeded, compressed legumes.
THE CEDAR BIRD.
BOMBYCILLA CAROLINENSIS, BlUSS.
P L A T E X L I I I . M A L E A N D F E M A L E .
LOUISIANA affords abundance of food and pleasant weather to this
species, for nearly four months of the year, as the Cedar Birds reach
that State about the beginning of November, and retire towards the
Middle Districts in the beginning of March. The Holly, the Vines,
the Persimon, the Pride-of-China, and various other trees, supply them
with plenty of berries and fruits, on which they fatten, and become so
tender and juicy as to be sought by every epicure for the table. I have
known an instance of a basketful of these little birds having been forwarded
to New Orleans as a Christmas present. The donor, however,
was disappointed in his desire to please his friend in that city, for it was
afterwards discovered that the steward of the steamer, in which they were
shipped, made pies of them for the benefit of the passengers.
The appetite of the Cedar Bird is of so extraordinary a nature as to
prompt it to devour every fruit or berry that comes in its way. In this
manner they gorge themselves to such excess as sometimes to be unable
to fly, and suffer themselves to be taken by the hand. Indeed I have
seen some which, although wounded and confined in a cage, have eaten
of apples until suffocation deprived them of life in the course of a few
days. When opened afterwards, they were found to be gorged to the
mouth.
It is a beautiful bird, but without any song, even during the breeding
season, having only a note which it uses for the purpose of calling or
rallying others of its species. This note is feeble, and as it were lisping,
yet perfectly effectual, for when uttered by one in a flock within hearing
of another party, the latter usually check their flight, and alight pellmell
on the same tree.
Their flight is easy, continued, and often performed at a considerable
height. The birds move in close bodies, sometimes amounting to large
flocks, making various circumvolutions before they alight, and then coming
down in such numbers together as to seem to be touching each other.
At this particular moment, or while performing their evolutions, some
p 2