The Flight and Avalomij of Birds. 45 



hundred and eighty miles per hour. This wonderful bird weighs 

 but one ounce, and jet the length of its wings from tip to tip is 

 about eighteen inclu's : but there is in the East Indies a recently 

 discovered bird called the Javanese crested swallow, whose length of 

 wing in proportion to its weight is still greater than in our own swift, 

 and whose speed is conjectured to be also proportionately greater. 

 There are some curious facts in connection with the flight of 

 birds in the immense flocks in which they are sometimes seen. I 

 will here mention two instances ; the first case being that of the 

 jiassenger pigeon in America, of which an eye-witness gives the 

 following account : — " Whilst waiting for dinner in an inn, at the 

 confluence of the Salt River with the Ohio, 1 saw immense legions 

 of pigeons going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on 

 the West, and the beech-wood forests directly on the East of me. 

 Not a single bird alighted, for not a nut or an acorn was that year 

 to be seen in the neighbourhood, they consequently flew so high 

 that different trials to reach them with a rifle proved ineffectual, 

 nor did the rejiorts disturb them in the least." He goes on to say, 

 " Before sunset 1 reached Louisville, distant about 55 miles, the 

 pigeons wore still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued 

 to do so for three days in succession. The people were all in 

 arms, the banks of the Ohio were crowded with men and boys 

 incessantly shooting at the pigeons, which then flew lower as they 

 passed the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed; for a week or 

 more the ])opulation fed on no other flesh than that of pigeons, 

 and talked of nothing but pigeons, and the whole neighbourhood 

 smelt of nothing but pigeons." In 1829 larger numbers of pas- 

 senger pigeons appeared in America than had ever been seen 

 before. Elocks extending miles in length were for days together 

 seen passing over the hills during the spring from the southward ; 

 the mighty mass collected in an encampment in a forest upwards 

 of nine miles in length and four in breadth, in which there was 

 scarcely a single tree, large or small, which was not loaded with 

 their nests. Captain Flincher relates a somewhat parallel instance 

 of another bird ; he says, that while on his voyage he saw, " a 

 stream of stormy petrels, which was from fifty to eighty yards deep 

 and three hundred yards or more in breadth. The birds were not 

 scattered, but flying as compactly as the full movement of their 

 wings seemed to allow, and this stream of petrels continued to 

 pass for a full hour without intermission, at a rate little inferior to 

 the swiftness of a pigeon." Now, taking the stratum at fifty yards 

 deep by three hundred in breadth, and assuming that it moved at 

 the rate of thirty miles an hour, and allowing nine cubic i'lches 

 of space to each bird, the number would amount to not less than 

 one hundred and fifty-one millions and a half. 



