INTE0DUCTI01!f OF BIRDS. Ill 



many as we now number of tlie common lien. The dove, how- 

 ever, must fall greatly short of the wild pigeon in multitude, and 

 it is hardly probable that the flocks of domestic geese and ducks 

 are as numerous as once were those of their wild congeners. The 

 pigeon, indeed, seems to have multiphed 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 earhest white inhabitants of 

 the American States as fiUing 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 abun- 

 dance, that its appearance in large numbers is recorded only at 

 long intervals, and it is never seen in the great flocks remembered 

 by many stiU hving observers as formerly very coramon. Dur- 

 ing the year 187Y, however, a " pigeon-roost " as it is called, or 

 breeding-place, covering a space of fifty square miles, was formed 

 in a forest in Benrie County, Michigan. The breeding season 

 lasted about six weeks, and the hundreds of sportsmen who filled 

 the forest seemed to produce no diminution in the numbers of 

 the birds. 



Introduction of Birds. 



Man has undesignedly introduced into new districts perhaps 

 fewer species of birds than of quadrupeds ; f but the distribution 

 of birds is very much influenced by the character of his industry, 



* The wood-pigeon, as well as the domestic dove, has been observed to in- 

 crease in niimbers in Eiirope 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 con- 

 fine themselves exclusively to the harvests for their nourishment. 



f The first mention I have found of the naturalization of a wild bird in 

 modern Europe is in the Menagiana, vol. iii., p. 174, edition of 1715, where it 

 is stated that Rene, King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou, who died in 1480, in- 

 troduced 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 



