282 Retrospective Criticism, 



place where, Mr. Audubon tells us, " there was little under- 

 wood ;" where " the uproar continued the whole of the night;" 

 where men had assembled "with iron pots containing sulphur;" 

 and " with torches of pine-knots, with poles and with guns;" 

 where " fires were lighted, and a magnificent as well as won- 

 derful and almost terrifying sight presented itself;" where, in 

 fine, the auditory faculties of Mr. Audubon himself became so 

 completely useless, on account of the stunning noise, that, 

 absolutely, he was "only aware of the firing by seeing the 

 shooters reloading." " O judgment ! thou art fled to brutish 

 beasts, and men have lost their reason," if they can bring 

 themselves to believe that into this sulphureous, torch-lighted, 

 detonating, yelling, roaring, and terrific attack on the pas- 

 senger pigeons, there came up a motley herd of wolves, foxes, 

 cougars, lynxes, bears, raccoons, opossums, and polecats, to 

 share the plunder, and actually tarried there till the rising of 

 the sun ; " at which time, Mr. Audubon informs us, they were 

 seen sneaking off. He himself saw what he relates. 



But let us pass on. " The pigeons," continues Mr. Audu- 

 bon, " arriving by thousands, alighted everywhere, one above 

 another, until solid masses as large as hogsheads were formed 

 on the branches all around." Solid masses ! Our European 

 pigeons, in a similar situation, would have been all smothered 

 in less than three minutes. Mr. Audubon informs us, towards 

 the end of his narrative, that the feathers of this pigeon " fall 

 off at the least touch." From this, we may infer to a cer- 

 tainty that every pigeon which was unlucky enough to be 

 undermost in the solid masses would lose every feather from 

 its uppermost parts, through the pressure of the feet of those 

 above it. Now, I would fain believe that instinct taught these 

 pigeons to resort to a certain part of the forest, solely for the 

 purpose of repose, and not to undergo a process of inevitable 

 suffocation ; and, at the same time, to have their backs de- 

 prived of every feather, while they were voluntarily submitting 

 to this self-inflicted method of ending their days. 



" Many trees," says Mr. Audubon, " two feet in diameter, 

 I observed, were broken off at no great distance from the 

 ground ; and the branches of many of the largest and tallest 

 had given way, as if the forest had been swept by a tornado. 

 Every thing proved to me that the number of birds resorting 

 to this part of the forest must be immense beyond conception." 

 I know that the force of a tornado will break the trunk of a 

 tree two feet in diameter, because its force acts horizontally 

 against the upright stem ; but how is it possible that a multitude 

 of pigeons, alighting upon a tree, could cause its upright bole, 

 two feet in diameter, to break off at no great distance from 



