GREAT PIGEON-FLIGHTS. 391 



Americans call it, near Selbyville in Kentucky, which 

 occurred about half a century ago; the birds made 

 their appearance at it about the loth of April, and 

 left with their young before the 25th of August. As 

 soon as the young birds were fully grown, parties of 

 people arrived from all parts of the country, and 

 encamped near this immense nursery. 



" Several of them informed me (says Mr. Wilson) that the 

 noise in the woods was so great, that it was difficult to hear 

 another person speak. The ground was strewed with broken 

 limbs of trees, eggs, and dead squab pigeons, which had 

 been precipitated from aloft. From twenty feet upwards to 

 the tops of the trees, the view presented a perfect tumult of 

 crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons: their wings 

 roaring like thunder, mingled with the crash of falling timber : 

 for axe-men were at work, cutting down those trees that 

 seemed most crowded with nests, and they contrived to fell 

 them so that they might bring down several trees. On some 

 trees were upwards of 100 nests, each containing one young 

 one only. It was dangerous to walk under these flying and 

 fluttering millions, from the frequent fall of branches, broken 

 down by the weight of the multitudes above ; which in their 

 descent often destroyed numbers of the birds themselves, 

 while the clothes of those engaged in the woods, were com- 

 pletely covered with the excrement of the pigeons." * 



Such were some of the wonderful scenes of bird 

 life, visible in the great American forests, within me- 

 mory of persons still living. The pigeon flights in 

 New Brunswick, according to Mr. Wilson, used during 

 June and July to darken the air for days together. 

 These deplorable scenes of waste and slaughter are 



* American Ornithology, by Alexr. Wilson and Prince Charles 

 Lucien Buonaparte, Edited by Sir Wm. Jardine, 3 vols. 1876 (see 

 "The Passenger Pigeon," Vol. ii, pp. 200 201). 



