INTRODUCTION OF BIRDS. as 
wild congeners. The pigeon, indeed, seems to have multiplied 
immensely, for some years after the first clearings in the woods, 
because the settlers warred unsparingly upon the hawk, while 
the crops of grain and other vegetable growths increased the 
supply of food within the reach of the young birds, at the age 
when their power of flight is not yet great enough to enable 
them to seek it over a wide area.* The pigeon is not described 
by the earliest white inhabitants of the American States as 
filling the air with such clouds of winged life as astonished 
naturalists in the descriptions of Audubon, and, at the present 
day, the net and the gun have so reduced its abundanee, that its 
appearance in large numbers is recorded only at long intervals, 
and it is never seen in the great flocks remembered by many 
still living observers as formerly very common. 
Introduction of Birds. 
Man has undesignedly introduced into new districts perhaps 
fewer species of birds than of quadrupeds;+ but the distribu- 
tion of birds is very much influenced by the character of his 
* The wood-pigeon, as well as the domestic dove, has been observed to in- 
crease in numbers in Europe also, when pains have been taken to exterminate 
the hawk. The American pigeons, which migrated in flocks so numerous that 
they were whole days in passing a given point, were no doubt injurious to the 
grain, but probably less so than is generally supposed ; for they did not confine 
themselves exclusively to the harvests for their nourishment. 
+ The first mention Ihave found of the naturalization of a wild bird in mod- 
ern Europe is in the Menagiana, vol. iii., p. 174, edition of 1715, where it is 
stated that René, King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou, who died in 1480, intro- 
duced the red-legged partridge into the latter country. Attempts have been 
made, and I believe with success, to naturalize the European lark on Long 
Island, and the English sparrow has been introduced into various parts of the 
Northern States, where he is useful by destroying noxious insects and worms 
not preyed upon by native birds. 
The humming-bird has resisted all efforts to acclimate him in Europe, though 
they have not unfrequently survived the passage across the ocean. 
In Switzerland and some other parts of Europe the multiplication of insec- 
tivorous birds is encouraged by building nests for them, and it is alleged that 
both fruit and forest trees have been essentially benefited by the protection 
thus afforded on 
