CHAPTER IX 



The Rate of Reproduction and Decline — Passing 



of the Beech Forests — Indian Legend of 



Hopah, the Pigeon 



WITH the pigeon family the general rule is to lay 

 two eggs for each brooding, but variations are 

 common, depending upon the abundance or scarcity 

 of the favorite food of each variety of these prolific 

 birds. Passenger Pigeons seem to have been adapt- 

 able to all the conditions of their habitat and varying" 

 environments; laying two eggs when plenty of beech- 

 mast was available, within a flight of fifty or sixty 

 miles of their nests, for two weeks of feeding the 

 young birds ; and, generally, one tgg when longer 

 flights for the food would become necessary for a con- 

 siderable part of the time. They would find the food 

 required for three or four nestings each spring, as a 

 rule, between northern Georgia, Alabama and Miss- 

 issippi, at the south, and the northern limits of the 

 beech tree, near James P)ay, at the west; thence east 

 along the Laurentian highlands to near the mouth of 

 the St. Lawrence river and Chaleurs Bay, in Quebec ; 

 thence southward 'through New Brunswick, Maine, 

 New Hampshire and Vermont, into northern New 

 York. 



In these broad forests, we may be certain, were to 

 be found hundreds of millions of bushels of beechnuts, 



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