434 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



part of the eighteenth century (Syst. Nat., 1766, ed. 12, Vol. I, 

 p. 285) ; but it was well known in America many years before. 

 In July, 1605, on the coast of Maine, in latitude 43° 25', 

 Champlain saw on some islands an "infinite number of 

 pigeons," of which he took a great quantity.^ 



Many early historians, who write of the birds of the 

 Atlantic coast region, mention the Pigeons. The Jesuit 

 Fathers, in their first narratives of Acadia (1610-13), state 

 that the birds were fully as abundant as the fish, and that in 

 their seasons the Pigeons overloaded the trees. ^ 



Passing now from Nova Scotia to Florida, we find that 

 Stork (1766) asserts that they were in such plenty there for 

 three months of the year that an account of them would seem 

 incredible.^ 



John Lawson (1709), in his History of Carolina, speaks of 

 prodigious flocks of Pigeons in 1701-02, which broke down trees 

 in the woods where they roosted, and cleared away all the 

 food in the country before them, scarcely leaving one acorn 

 on the ground.^ 



The early settlers in Virginia found the Pigeons in winter 

 " beyond number or imagination." 



Strachey (1612) says: "A kind of wood-pidgeon we see in 

 winter time, and of them such nombers, as I should drawe 

 (from our homelings here, such who have scene, peradventure 

 scarse one more than in the markett) the creditt of my rela- 

 tion concerning all the other in question yf I should expresse 

 what extended flocks, and how manie thousands in one flock, I 

 have scene in one daie . . . but there be manie hundred wit- 

 nesses." ^ 



Hamor (1615) says: "My selfe haue scene three or foure 

 houres together flockes in the aire, so thicke that euen they 

 haue shaddowed the skie from vs." ^ 



Professor Kalm found the Pigeons in numbers "beyond 



1 Champlain, Samuel de: Pub. Prince Soc, 1878, Vol. IT, pp. 68, 69. 



2 Thwaitcs, R. G., and others: Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1896, Vol. I, p. 253. 



3 Stork, William: An Account of East Florida, 1766, p. 51. 



4 Lawson, John: History of Carolina, 1860, pp. 232, 233. 



5 Strachey, William: The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Brittannia, printed for the Hakluyt 

 Soc, 1849, p. 126. 



6 Hamor, Raphe: A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia, 1615, p. 21. 



