398 LAND-BIRDS. 



wherever the branches could accommodate them. The Pigeons 

 made their first appearance there about the tenth of April, 

 and left it altogether, with their young, before the twenty- 

 fifth of May. 



" As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they 

 left their nests, numerous parties of the inhabitants, from all 

 parts of the adjacent country, came with wagons, axes, beds, 

 cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater 

 part of their families, and encamped for several days at this 

 immense nursery. Several of them informed me, that the 

 noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and 

 that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak 

 without bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with 

 broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab Pigeons, which 

 had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of 

 hogs were fattening. Hawks, Buzzards and Eagles were 

 sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from 

 their nests at pleasure ; while from twenty feet upwards to 

 the tops of the trees the view through the woods presented a 

 perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of 

 Pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder ; mingled with the 

 frequent crash of falling timber ; for now the axe-men were 

 at work cutting down those trees that seemed to be most 

 crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a 

 manner, that in their descent they might bring down several 

 others ; by which means the falling of one large tree some- 

 times produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size to 

 the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. On some single 

 trees upwards of one hundred nests were found, each contain- 

 ing one young only, a circumstance in the history of this bird 

 not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to 

 walk under these flying and fluttering millions, from the fre- 

 quent fall of large branches, broken down by the weight of 

 the multitudes above, and which in their descent often de- 

 stroyed numbers of the birds themselves. . . . 



" I had left the public road to visit the remains of the 

 breeding place near Shelby ville, and was traversing the woods 

 with my gun, on my way to Frankfort, when about one 



