66 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



winter time I have seene flockes of pidgeons, and have eaten of them : They doe 

 fly from tree to tree as other birds doe, which our pidgeons will not doe in Eng- 

 land : They are of all colours as ours are, but their wings and tayles are far 

 longer, and therefore it is likely they fly swifter to escape the terrible hawkes in 

 this country." 1 



Wood, writing in 1634, says : "These Birds come into the Countrey, to goe 

 to the North parts in the beginning of our Spring, at which time (if I may be 

 counted worthy, to be beleeved in a thing that is not so strange as true) I have 

 seene them fly as if the Aeyerie regiment had beene Pigeons ; seeing neyther 

 beginning nor ending, length, or breadth of these Millions of Millions. The 

 shouting of people, the ratling of Gunnes, and pelting of small shotte could not 

 drive them out of their course, but so they continued for foure or five houres 

 together : yet it must not be concluded, that it is thus often ; for it is but at the 

 beginning of the Spring, and at Michaelmas [September 29th], when they 

 returne backe to the Southward ; yet are there some all the yeare long, which 

 are easily attayned by such as looke after them. Many of them build amongst 

 the Pine-trees, thirty miles to the North-east of our plantations ; joyning nest to 

 nest, and tree to tree by their nests, so that the Sunne never sees the ground in 

 that place, from whence the Indians fetch whole loades of them." 



Thirty miles northeast of Boston brings us to the region of the Essex 

 Woods mainly composed of white pines — a region where I found Passenger 

 Pigeons in the breeding season in the late seventies. 



In the Peabody Academy, at Salem, in one of the cases devoted to the 

 birds of Essex County, is a net which was formerly used by Francis Curtis, at 

 Boxford, for capturing Passenger Pigeons. The last flock taken with this net 

 was in the year 1850. 



In 1872, Wild Pigeons were still common as shown by the following inter- 

 esting quotation : 2 " In the period of berries, the wild pigeons visit our Cape 

 in flocks. They are less numerous than in former years, but may be seen 

 sometimes in considerable numbers in several of their old haunts ; particularly 

 in the pines and the pasture south of them, between Pigeon Cove and Lanesville, 

 within and around Brier Swamp, and in the wood between Folly Point and 

 Lanesville one way, and the Willows and the Ipswich Bay shore the other. But 

 a few summers ago there was, one day, a gathering of two thousand people in 

 this last-named locality, listening to a speech concerning the political affairs of 

 our nation. The speaker, General Butler, stood on a slight elevation in the 

 shade of a wild cherry-tree. It seemed that the tree had been previously visited 



1 Francis Higginson : New England's Plantation, 1630. 



2 H. C. Leonard : Pigeon Cove and Vicinity, p. 165, 1873. 



