ROOSTING PLACES OF WILD PIGEONS. 



[Seepage 59, Vol. II.} 



WHEN these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from 

 considerable distances visit them in the night, with guns, 

 clubs, long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines 

 of destruction. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load 

 their horses with them. Not far from Shelby ville in the state 

 of Kentucky, some years ago, there was one of these breeding 

 places, which stretched through the woods in nearly a north 

 and south direction, was several miles in breadth, and was 

 said to be upwards of forty miles in extent ! In this tract 

 almost every tree was furnished with nests, wherever the 

 branches could accommodate them. The Pigeons mad^e their 

 first appearance there about the tenth of April, and left it 

 altogether, with their young, before the 25th 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 with- 

 out bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken 

 limbs of trees, eggs, and squab Pigeons, which had been pre- 

 cipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs were fatten- 

 ing. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles, were sailing about in 

 great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their nests at plea- 

 sure ; 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 a such a manner, that in their 



