THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 37 



hind tracing the exact route of their predecessors. 

 This would continue sometimes long after both ex- 

 tremities were beyond the reach of sight; so that the 

 whole, with its glittering undulations, marked a space 

 on the face of the heavens resembling the windings of 

 a vast and majestic river. 



''When the bend became very great, the birds, as 

 if sensible of the unnecessarily circuitous course they 

 were taking, suddenly changed their direction, so that 

 what was in column before became an immense front, 

 straightening all its indentures until it swept the heav- 

 ens in one vast and infinitely exteaded line. Other 

 lesser bodies united with each other as they happened 

 to approach, with such ease and elegance of evolutions, 

 forming new figures, and varying them as they united 

 or separated, that I was never tired of contemplating 

 them. Sometimes a hawk would make a sweep on a 

 particular part of the column, when almost as quick as 

 lightning, that part shot downwards out of the com- 

 mon track ; but soon rising again, continued advancing 

 at the same rate as before. This ciefiection was con- 

 tinued by those beliind, who on arrivmg at this point 

 dived down almost perpendicularly to a great depth, 

 and rising, followed the exact path of those before 

 them." 



Standing upon the flattened top ot a high hill, over- 

 looking the Allegheny valley, in 1870, Dan Gleason, the 

 Indian wolf hunter, told me about the pigeons, which 

 were flying past us then in many strata, some overhead 



