26 The Passenger Pigeon 



the above account of its flight, because the most impor- 

 tant facts connected with its habits relate to its migra- 

 tions. These are entirely owing to the necessity of pro- 

 curing food, and are not performed with the view of 

 escaping the severity of a northern latitude, or of seek- 

 ing a southern one for the purpose of breeding. They 

 consequently do not take place at any fixed period or 

 season of the year. Indeed, it sometimes happens that 

 a continuance of a sufficient supply of food in one dis- 

 trict will keep these birds absent from another for years. 

 I know, at least, to a certainty, that in Kentucky they 

 remained for several years constantly, and were no- 

 where else to be found. They all suddenly disap- 

 peared one season when the mast was exhausted and did 

 not return for a long period. Similar facts have been 

 observed in other States. 



Their great power of flight enables them to survey 

 and pass over an astonishing extent of country in a very 

 short time. This is proved by facts well-known in 

 America. Thus, pigeons have been killed in the 

 neighborhood of New York, with their crops full of 

 rice, which they must have collected in the fields of 

 Georgia and Carolina, these districts being the nearest 

 in which they could possibly have procured a supply of 

 that kind of food. As their power of digestion is so 

 great that they will decompose food entirely in twelve 

 hours, they must in this case have traveled between three 

 hundred and four hundred miles in six hours, which 



