AVES-PIGEON. 581 



"As soon as these birds discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to 

 alight, they fly round in circles, reviewing the country below, and at this 

 lime exhibit their phalanx in all the beauties of their plumage; now 

 displaying a large glistening sheet of bright azure, by exposing their 

 backs to view, and suddenly veering, exhibit a mass of rich deep pur- 

 ple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and are lost among the 

 foliage for a moment, but they reappear as suddenly above; after which 

 ihey alight, and, as if affrighted, the whole again take to wing, with a roar 

 equal to loud thunder, and wander swiftly through the forest to see if danger 

 is near. Impelling hunger, however, soon brings them all to the ground, 

 and then they are seen industriously throwing up the fallen leaves to seek 

 for the last beech-nut or acorn; the rear ranks continually rising, passing 

 over, and alighting in front, in such quick succession, that the whole still 

 bears the appearance of being on the wing. The quantity of ground 

 thus swept up, or, to use a French expression, moissonnee, is astonishing, and 

 so 'clean is this work, that gleaners never find it worth their while to follow 

 where the pigeons have been. On such occasions, when the woods are 

 thus filled with them, they are killed in immense numbers, yet without any 

 apparent diminution. During the middle of the day, after their repast is 

 finished, the whole settle on the trees to enjoy rest, and digest their food ; 

 but as the sun sinks in the horizon, they depart en masse for the roosting 

 place, not unfrequently hundreds of miles off, as has been ascertained by 

 persons keeping account of their arrival and of their departure from their 

 curious roosting places, to which I must now conduct the reader. 



" To one of those general nightly rendezvous, not far from the banks of 

 Green River, in Kentucky, I paid repeated visits. It was, as is almost al- 

 ways the case, pitched in a portion of the forest where the trees were of 

 great magnitude of growth, but with little underwood. I rode through it 

 lengthwise upwards of forty miles, and crossed it in different parts, ascer- 

 taining its average width to be rather more than three miles. My first view of 

 it was about a fortnight subsequent to the period when they had chosen this 

 spot, and I arrived there nearly two hours before the setting of the sun. Few 

 pigeons were then to be seen, but a great number of persons, with horses 

 and wagons, guns and ammunition, had already established different camps 

 on the borders. Two farmers from the vicinity of Russelsville, distant more 

 than a hundred miles, had driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fat- 

 tened on pigeon-meat, and here and there the people, employed in picking 

 and salting what had already been procured, were seen sitting in the centre 

 of large piles of these birds, all proving to me that the number resorting 

 there at night must be immense, and probably consisting of all those then 

 feeding in Indiana, some distance beyond Jeffersonville, not less than one 

 hundred and fifty miles off. The dung of the birds was several inches deep, 

 covering the whole extent of the roosting place like a bed of snow. Many 



49* 



