The Passenger Pigeon 21 



all sides from morning to night. Wagon loads of them 

 are poured into market, where they sell from fifty to 

 twenty-five and even twelve cents per dozen; and 

 pigeons become the order of the day at dinner, breakfast 

 and supper, until the very name becomes sickening. 

 When they have been kept alive and fed for some time 

 on corn and buckwheat their flesh acquires great supe- 

 riority; but, in their common state, they are dry and 

 blackish and far inferior to the full grown young ones 

 or squabs. 



The nest of the wild pigeon is formed of a few dry 

 slender twigs, carelessly put together, and with so little 

 concavity that the young one, when half grown, can 

 easily be seen from below. The eggs are pure white. 

 Great numbers of hawks, and sometimes the bald eagle 

 himself, hover above those breeding places, and seize 

 the old or the young from the nest amidst the rising 

 multitudes, and with the most daring effrontery. The 

 young, when beginning to fly, confine themselves to the 

 under part of the tall woods where there is no brush, 

 and where nuts and acorns are abundant, searching 

 among the leaves for mast, and appear like a pro- 

 digious torrent rolling through the woods, every one 

 striving to be in the front. Vast numbers of them are 

 shot while in this situation. A person told me that he 

 once rode furiously into one of these rolling multitudes 

 and picked up thirteen pigeons which had been trampled 

 to death by his horse's feet. In a few minutes they will 



