THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 43 



With that much \vc must be saiishtcl, so far as 

 clumsy words in ink are concerned. From Wilson to 

 the author of "Juniata Memories," and then back to 

 Audubon, who admits that he caiinoi "describe the 

 extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions" ; what these 

 authors cannot describe about birds in words we must 

 avail ourselves of imagination's artful aid to compre- 

 hend, or adopt the poetic plan of ibx Indian and ges- 

 ture, dance, cnant and pray, in our fervor to convey the 

 ecstasy we feel at certain sublime moments of our 

 experience. Those who have never beheld a tlight of 

 wild pigeons have never had an opportunity of devel- 

 oping their faculties to comprehend such a sight. They 

 are also unable to assimilate most of the efforts to 

 dewelop them than can be made through the medium 

 of pen and ink. 



All that our national emblem means to our patriotic 

 young Americans now preparing for war, the passen- 

 ger pigeons conveyed to the Indian, and more. They 

 were his emblem of incarnation anri hope of a blissful 

 immortahty; his ideal of freedom, and he emulated 

 their swiftness and their energy. In their vicissitudes 

 of life he saw the omens of his own struggles with all 

 of his enemies in the forest. Against his enemies he 

 fought, beheving, like Hector, that "The best of omens 

 is to defend one's country," and he slew the enemies of 

 his patron bird, hoping to perpetuate them, and enable 

 them to increase and protect and clieer his children. 

 Something of this commendable spirit was felt by the 

 ornithologists as they studied the i)!gcons and their 



