OF NEW ENGLAND. 381 
nursery. Several of them informed me, that the noise in the 
woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and that it was 
difficult for one person to hear another speak without bawling 
in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, 
eggs, and young squab Pigeons, which had been precipitated 
from above, and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, 
Buzzards and Eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and 
seizing the squabs from their nests at pleasure; while from 
twenty feet. upwards to the tops of the trees the view through 
the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and flut- 
tering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder ; 
mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for now the 
axe-men were at work cutting down those trees that seemed 
to be most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in 
such a manner, that in their descent they might bring down 
several others; by which means the falling of one large tree 
sometimes produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size 
to the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. On some single 
trees upwards of one hundred nests were found, each contain- 
ing one young only, a circumstance in the history of this bird 
not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk 
under these flying and fluttering millions, from the frequent fall 
of large branches, broken down by the weight of the multitudes 
above, and which in their descent often destroyed numbers of 
the birds themselves; * * *,.” 
‘‘T had left the public road to visit the remains of the breed- 
ing place near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with 
my gun, on my way to Frankfort, when about one o’clock the 
Pigeons, which I had observed flying the greater part of the 
morning northerly, began to return in such immense numbers 
as I never before had witnessed. Coming to an opening by a 
side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a more uninter- 
rupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They were 
flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond 
gun shot, in several strata deep, and so close together that 
could shot have reached them, one discharge could not have 
failed of bringing down several individuals. From right to left 
