igo2] Bethune Passenger Pigeons. 41 



on the men used to go back in the early morning- to the brow 

 ot these hills, and wait for the pigeons there. The birds would 

 rise but very little when they came to the hills, and consequently, 

 would very^often be within range of sticks in the hands of the men, 

 but afterwards as they saw that the country remained constant at the 

 new level they would gradually rise to a greater height. As a rule 

 they did not fly closer than about 100 feet from the ground, and 

 sometimes would be entirely out of gun range ; on such occasions 

 the people would get up on the house-tops and shoot from there. 

 These flights would occur day after day, tha flocks being 20 to 30 

 minutes apart as a rule; during the part of the day when the flight 

 was on and number of pigeons was of course simply incalculable. 

 They would then disappear in the north country, but during the 

 summer quite frequently in the morning one of the children would 

 run in to say that there was a pigeon in the garden and immedi- 

 ately whoever was considered the best shot would take the gun out 

 and kill it. These birds were very tame in the trees ; one could 

 walk immediately beneath them without putting them to flight. 

 The unavoidable result of such slaughter was that every person 

 became thoroughly sick of pigeon pie and stewed pigeon before 

 the flights ceased. I do not suppose that the pigeons crossed the 

 lake always at the same place, as the whole country for hundreds 

 of miles was covered with them in these early days. On one 

 occasion in 1858 or 1859 while holidaying west of Dundas, I drove 

 some twelve miles towards Guelph with two companions, for trout 

 fishing. Part of the road lay through a pine forest so dense that 

 in the early hours of the morning it was cold, even in August, and 

 the shade was so thick that the road was dark. Beyond this 

 forest lay an immense swamp through which ran a corduroy road 

 about one mile in length, and just before entering the swamp there 

 was a stubble field of about ten acres on the north side of the road. 

 As we emerged from the forest we could see that this field was 

 literally blue with pigeons, so that one could hardly see the 

 ground in any place. The birds were feeding on the grain which 

 had been shelled out before it was harvested. Of course we had 

 a gun with us, and my uncle got out and went over to the snake- 

 fence to get a shot, but before he succeeded, the sentinels who 

 were stationed at the outskirts of the field, gave the alarm, (which 



