HEREDITY, VARIATION 117 



Indiana, these are generally in backwoods, and often extend in 

 nearly a straight line across the country for a great distance. Not 

 far from Shelby ville, in the State of Kentucky, about five 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 made their first 

 appearance there about the xoth 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 the 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 

 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 

 the nests at pleasure, while from twenty feet upwards to the top 

 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 fallen 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 200 squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones 

 and almost one heap of fat. It was dangerous to walk under these 

 flying and fluttering millions from the frequent fall of large branches, 

 broken down by the weight of the multitudes above, and which in 

 their descent often destroyed numbers of the birds themselves, 

 while the clothes of those traversing the woods were completely 

 covered with the excrements of the pigeons. 



"I passed for several miles through this same breeding-place, 

 where every tree was spotted with nests, the remains of those above 

 described. In many instances I counted upwards of ninety nests 

 in a single tree; but the pigeons had abandoned this place for 

 another, sixty or eighty miles off, towards Green river, where they 

 were said at that time to be equally numerous. From the great 

 numbers that were continually passing over our heads to or from 

 that quarter, I had no doubt of the truth of this statement. The 

 mast had been chiefly consumed in Kentucky ; and the pigeons, 

 every morning a little before sunrise, set out for the Indiana terri- 



