OF NEW ENGLAND. 381 



nursery. Several of them informed me, that the noise in the 

 woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and that it was 

 difBcuIt for one person to hear another speak witliout bawling 

 in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, 

 eggs, and young squab Pigeons, Avhich had been precipitated 

 from above, and on wliich herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, 

 Buzzards and Eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and 

 seizing the squabs from their nests at pleasure ; while from 

 twenty feet upwards to the tops of the trees the view through 

 the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and flut- 

 tering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunfler ; 

 mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for now the 

 axe-men were at work cutting down those trees that seemed 

 to be most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in 

 such a manner, that in their descent thej' might bring down 

 ceveral others ; by which means the falling of one large tree 

 sometimes produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size 

 to the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. On some single 

 trees upwards of one hundred nests were found, each contain- 

 ing one 3"0ung onl}', a circumstance in the history of this bird 

 not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk 

 under these flying and fluttering millions, from the frequent fall 

 of large branches, broken down b)^ the weight of the multitudes 

 above, and which in their descent often destroyed numbers of 

 the birds themselves ;***." 



" I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breed- 

 ing place near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with 

 my gun, on my way to Frankfort, when about one o'clock the 

 Pigeons, which I had observed flying the greater part of the 

 morning northerly, began to return in such immense numbers 

 as I never before had witnessed. Coming to an opening by a 

 side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a more uninter- 

 rupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They were 

 flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond 

 gun shot, in several strata deep, and so close together that 

 could shot have reached them, one discharge could not have 

 failed of bringing down several individuals. From right to left 



