THE PASSENGER PIGEON—-KALM AND AUDUBON. 41] 
owing to the sea air, are always milder, and the ground more and 
earlier free from snow. Experience has shown that both of these 
circumstances have caused their migrations to take place in such 
great multitudes. 
A peculiar fact, and one which older persons have unanimously 
maintained to be true, is that on all occasions which they could 
remember, when the pigeons appeared. in such great numbers, there 
had always been during the preceding autumn, in Pennsylvania and 
adjacent localities, an abundant crop of acorns and other arboreal 
seeds, excelling that of several previous years; but during their stay 
the pigeons had so carefully searched and ransacked all possible nooks 
and corners that after their departure it was almost impossible to 
find a single acorn in the woods. 
Several extremely aged men also declared that during their child- 
hood there were, in summertime, many more of the pigeons in New 
Sweden than there are now; the cause of this is that the country is 
at present much more populous and cultivated and the woods more 
cleared off, and as a result the pigeons have either been killed off or 
scared away. 
As nearly all the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and the English set- 
tlements in the South did not quite know whence these numberless 
swarms of pigeons came from, they entreated me to ascertain, during 
my journeys in the interior of the country, where so many were to be 
found in summertime, what their food and other economic require- 
ments were at that time of the year, and so on. During my journey 
to and within Canada I found the desired occasion of learning all of 
this, which I will now briefly relate. 
When toward the end of June, 1749 (new style), I had left the 
English colonies and set out for Canada through the wilderness which 
separates the English and French colonies from each other, and 
which to a great extent consists of thick and lofty forests, I had an 
opportunity of seeing these pigeons in countless numbers. Their 
young had at this time left their nests, and their great numbers dark- 
ened the sky when they occasionally rose en masse from the trees into 
theair. Insome places the trees were full of their nests. The French- 
men whom we met in this place had shot a great number of them, and 
of this they gave us a goodly share. These pigeons kept up a noisy 
murmuring and cooing sound all night, during which time the trees 
were full of them, and it was difficult to obtain peaceful sleep on 
account of their continuous noise. In this wilderness we could hear 
in the nighttime, during the calmest weather, big trees collapsing 
in the forests, which, during the silence of the night, caused tremendous 
reports; this might in all probability be ascribed to the pigeons, which, 
according to their custom, had loaded a tree down with their numbers 
to such an extent that it broke down; although other causes might 
