THE PASSENGER PIGEON — KALM AND AUDUBON. 411 



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 

 the air. In some 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 



