Destruction by Man 47 



lation, estimated that this one flock contained 

 at least two billion, two hundred and thirty 

 million, two hundred and seventy-two thou- 

 sand pigeons. 



Audubon also gives a grand account of the 

 armies of the passenger pigeon as observed by 

 him. In 1813, while riding from Henderson to 

 Louisville, he noticed the pigeons flying over in 

 even greater numbers than usual, and dismounted 

 that he might attempt to count the number of 

 detached flocks which passed him in an hour. 

 In twenty-one minutes he gave up the task as 

 impracticable. He says, "I travelled on, and 

 still the air was literally filled with pigeons; the 

 light of the noonday sun was obscured as if by 

 an eclipse, and the continual buzz of the wings 

 had a tendency to lull my senses to repose." 

 It would seem that nothing man could do would 

 greatly diminish such countless multitudes as 

 these, especially when Audubon assures us that 

 they at least doubled their number and not in- 

 frequently quadrupled them yearly. But alas, 

 the pigeons were easy to get, they had a market 

 value, and it was not against the law to kill them, 

 and this combination would have insured their 

 extermination had there been a hundred times 

 as many. The fact that they roosted and nested 

 in vast densely-packed colonies greatly simplified 



