NOTE-BOOK OF A NATUEALIST. 409 



must have been exciting and disgusting. The ground 

 was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young 

 squab pigeons, on which herds of hogs were fattening. 

 In the air, great numbers of hawks, buzzards, and eagles 

 were sailing, bearing away the squabs from their nests at 

 pleasure, while from twenty feet upwards to the tree-tops 

 was one perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering 

 multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder. 

 This din was heightened by the crash of falling timber, as 

 the strokes of the axemen brought down the trees most 

 crowded with nests, which they contrived to fell so as to 

 bring down several other trees in the fall. Two hundred 

 squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and one 

 heap of fat, were sometimes collected from one fallen tree. 

 Each nest contained one squab only. 



Wilson passed for several miles through this same 

 breeding-place, after the pigeons abandoned it for another 

 sixty or eighty miles off, and saw enovigh of the remains 

 of the nests to satisfy him that the account which he had 

 heard was not exaggerated. The great numbers that 

 passed over his head confirmed him in this opinion. 

 Notwithstanding the havoc that had been made among 

 the birds, they still swarmed. The mast had been for 

 the most part consumed in Kentucky ; and every morn- 

 ing, a little before sunrise, masses of these pigeons set out 

 for the Indiana territory, about sixty miles distant. Many 

 of them returned before ten o'clock, but the main body 

 generally appeared on their return a little after noon. 



Wilson had left the public road to visit the ruins of 

 the breeding-place near Shelbyville, and was traversing 

 the woods with his gun on the way to Frankfort, when, 

 about ten o'clock, the pigeons which he had observed 

 during the greater part of the morning fl}dng northerly, 

 began to return in such immense numbers as he had 

 never before seen. He sto23ped at an opening by the 

 side of Benson Creek, where he had a more uninterrupted 



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