278 THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 



even at this rate, it would be difficult to account for their 

 vast numbers, without the further knowledge of their prolific 

 nature, and the rapid growth of the young birds. Their 

 sittings are renewed, or rather continued; one pair having 

 been thus known to produce seven, and another, eight times 

 in one year. In twenty-three days from the laying of the 

 egg, the young ones could fly, being completely feathered on 

 the eighth day. When the broods are matured, with the 

 exception of, probably, some tons of the young, which are 

 killed and carried off by actual waggon-loads, being more 

 esteemed for food than the old ones, they continue their 

 course towards the north ; from whence, in December, they 

 return in the same dense mass, and are usually found to be 

 remarkably fat ; proving that in the northern regions they 

 find an ample supply of food ; and vast indeed must be the 

 stock, to furnish and fatten such a swarm of hungry mouths. 

 In the crop of one of our common English Wood-Pigeons, 

 just killed, we found upwards of an ounce of the fresh- 

 budding leaves of clover, and in another, mentioned by Mr. 

 White, of Selborne, was found an equal quantity of tender 

 turnip-tops, so nice and inviting, that the wife of the person 

 who shot it, boiled and ate them, as a delicate dish of greens, 

 for supper. The consumption of grains of wheat by a com- 

 mon House-Pigeon, we found to amount to two ounces in 

 twenty-four hours, and in the following twenty-four hours, 

 when fed with peas, it consumed about the same weight. 

 Hence we may easily form some idea of the enormous con- 

 sumption of a large flight. Supposing one Pigeon to feed 

 regularly at the above rate, its annual average supply would 

 amount to about fifty pounds in weight, a serious consump- 

 tion of grain when large numbers are concerned. The fol- 

 lowing calculation, made by a very accurate observer, places 

 the subject, as far as relates to the American Wood-Pigeons, 

 in a still more striking point of view. He saw a column of 

 Pigeons, one mile in breadth, moving at the rate of one mile 

 a minute, which, as it was four hours in passing, made its 

 whole length 240 miles. He then calculated that each square 

 yard of this moving body contained three Pigeons, which 



