418 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



one for the purpose of breeding. They consequently do not take 

 place at any fixed period or season of the year. Indeed, it sometimes 

 happens that a continuance of a sufficient supply of food in one dis- 

 trict will keep these birds absent from another for years. I know, at 

 least, to a certainty that in Kentucky they remained for several years 

 constantly, and were nowhere else to be found. They all suddenly 

 disappeared one season when the mast was exhausted, and did not 

 return for a long period. Similar facts have been observed in other 

 States. 



Their great power of flight enables them to survey and pass over an 

 astonishing extent of country in a very short time. This is proved by 

 facts well known in America. Thus, pigeons have been killed in the 

 neighborhood of New York, with their crops full of rice, which they 

 must have collected in the fields of Georgia and Carolina, these dis- 

 tricts being the nearest in which they could possibly have procured 

 a supply of that kind of food. As their power of digestion is so great 

 that they will decompose food entirely in 12 hours, they must in this 

 case have traveled between 300 and 400 miles in 6 hours, winch shows 

 their speed to be at an average about 1 mile in a minute. A velocity 

 such as this would enable one of these birds, were it so inclined, to 

 visit the European Continent in less than three days. 



This great power of flight is seconded by as great a power of vision, 

 which enables them, as they travel at that swift rate, to inspect the 

 country below, discover their food with facility, and thus attain the 

 object for which their journey has been undertaken. This I have also 

 proved to be the case, by having observed them, when passing over a 

 sterile part of the country, or one scantily furnished with food suited 

 to them, keep high in the air, flying with an extended front, so as to 

 enable them to survey hundreds of acres at once. On the contrary, 

 when the land is richly covered with food, or the trees abundantly 

 hung with mast, they fly low, in order to discover the part most 

 plentifully supplied. 



Their body is of an elongated oval form, steered by a long well- 

 plumed tail, and propelled by well-set wings, the muscles of which 

 are very large and powerful for the size of the bird. When an indi- 

 vidual is seen gliding through the woods and close to the observer, it 

 passes like a thought, and on trying to see it again, the eye searches in 

 vain; the bird is gone. 



The multitudes of wild pigeons in our woods are astonishing. In- 

 deed, after having viewed them so often, and under so many cir- 

 cumstances, I even now feel inclined to pause and assure myself that 

 what I am going to relate is fact. Yet I have seen it all, and that 

 too, in the company of persons who, like myself, were struck with 

 amazement. 



