tASSENGER PIGEON. 5 



It, and removed sixty or eighty miles off to the banks of Green 

 River in the same State, where they congregated in equal 

 numbers. These situations seem regulated by the prospect of 

 a supply of food, such as beech and oak mast. They also 

 feed on most kinds of pulse and grain, as well as whortle- 

 berries, with those of the holly and nettle tree. Wilson often 

 counted upwards of ninety nests in a single tree, and the whole 

 forest was filled with them. These frail cradles for the young 

 are merely formed of a few slender dead twigs negligently put 

 together, and with so little art that the concavity appears 

 scarcely sufficient for the transient reception of the young, who 

 are readily seen through this thin flooring from below. The 

 eggs are white, as usual, and only two in number, one of them 

 abortive, according to Wilson, and producing usually but a 

 single bird. Audubon, however, asserts that there are two, as 

 in the tame Pigeons, where the number of the sexes in this 

 faithful tribe are almost uniformly equal. Their cooing call, 

 billing, and general demeanor are apparently quite similar to 

 the behavior of the domestic species in the breeding-season. 

 Birds of prey, and rapacious animals generally, are pretty 

 regular attendants upon these assailable communities. But 

 their most destructive enemy is man ; and as soon as the 

 young are fully grown, the neighboring inhabitants assemble 

 and encamp for several days around the devoted Pigeons with 

 wagons, axes, and cooking utensils, like the outskirts of a 

 destructive army. The perpetual tumult of the birds, the 

 crowding and fluttering multitudes, the thundering roar of 

 their wings, and the crash of falling trees, from which the 

 young are thus precipitated to the ground by the axe, pro- 

 duces altogether a scene of indescribable and almost terrific 

 confusion. It is dangerous to walk beneath these clustering 

 crowds of birds, from the frequent descent of large branches 

 broken down by the congregating millions ; the horses start at 

 the noise, and conversation can only be heard in a shout. 

 These squabs, or young Pigeons, of which three or four broods 

 are produced in the season, are extremely fat and palatable, 

 and as well as the old birds killed at the roosts are often, with 



