448 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



a backload of Pigeons. The Jesuit Relations of 1662-64 tell 

 of a man who killed one hundred and thirty-two birds at a 

 shot.^ Kalm states that frequently as many as one hundred 

 and thirty were killed at one shot. Shooting in the large 

 roosts was very destructive. Osborn records a kill of one 

 hundred and forty-four birds with two barrels. An engine of 

 destruction often used in early times was an immense swivel 

 gun, loaded with " handfuls of bird shot." Such guns were 

 taken to the roosts and fired into the thickest masses of 

 Pigeons, killing at one discharge " enough to feed a whole 

 settlement." 



As cities were established in the east, the Indians, now 

 armed with guns and finding a market for their birds, became 

 doubly destructive; but as the white man moved toward the 

 west he destroyed the Indian as well as the game, until few 

 Indians were left in most of the country occupied by the 

 Pigeons. 



The Pigeons were reduced greatly in numbers on the whole 

 Atlantic seaboard during the first two centuries after the 

 settlement of the country, but in the west their numbers 

 remained apparently the same until the nineteenth century. 

 There was no appreciable decrease there during the first half 

 of that century; but during the latter half, railroads were 

 pushed across the plains to the Pacific, settlers increased 

 rapidly to the Mississippi and beyond, and the diminution of 

 the Pigeons in the west began. Already it had become notice- 

 able in western Pennsylvania, western New York, along the 

 Appalachian Mountain chain and in Ohio. This was due in 

 part to the destruction of the forests, particularly the beech 

 w^oods, which once covered vast tracts, and w^hich furnished 

 the birds with a chief supply of food. Later, the primeval 

 pine and hemlock forests of the northern States largely were 

 cut away. This deprived the birds of another source of 

 food, — the seed of these trees. The destruction of the forests, 

 however, was not complete; for, although great tracts of land 

 were cleared, there remained and still remain vast regions 

 more or less covered by coppice growth sufficient to furnish 



1 Thwaites, R. G., and others: Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1896, Vol. 48, p. 177. 



