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NATURAL HISTORY. 



seconded by a remarkable power of vision, enabling them to discover their food with great readiness. 

 Mr. Audubon states that he has observed flocks of these birds, in passing over a sterile part of the 

 country, fly high in the air, with an extended front, enabling them to survey hundreds of acres at 

 once. When the land is richly covered with food, or the trees well supplied with mast, they fly low, 

 in order to discover the part most plentifully supplied. Several writers who have witnessed the 

 occasionally enormous flights of these Pigeons, have given very full and graphic accounts of their 

 immense numbers, that seem hardly credible to those who have not seen them. Mr. Audubon relates 

 that in 1813, on his way from Henderson to Louisville, in crossing the barrens near Hardensburg, he 

 observed these birds flying to the south-west in greater numbers than he had ever known before. He 

 attempted to count the different flocks as they successively passed, but after counting one hundred and 



BllOXZE-WIXCJ. 



sixty-three in twenty-one minutes he gave it up as impracticable. As he journeyed on, their numbers 

 seemed to increase. The air seemed filled with Pigeons, and the light of noonday to be obscured as by 

 an eclipse. Not a single bird alighted, as the woods were destitute of mast, and all flew so high that 

 he failed to reach any with a rifle. He speaks of their aerial evolutions as beautiful in the extreme, 

 especially when a Hawk pressed upon the rear of a flock. All at once, like a torrent, and' with a 

 noise like that of thunder, they rushed together into a compact mass, and darted forward in undulating 

 lines, descending and sweeping near the earth with marvellous velocity, then mounting almost perpen- 

 dicularly in a vast column, wheeling and twisting so that their continued lines seemed to resemble the 

 coils of a gigantic serpent. During the whole of his journey from Hardensburg to Louisville, fifty-five 

 miles, they continued to pass in undiminished numbers, and also did so during the three following days. 

 At times they flew so low that multitudes were destroyed, and for many days the entire population 

 seemed to eat nothing but Pigeons. 



" When a flight of Pigeons discovers an abundance of food, sufficient to induce them to alight, they 

 are said to pass around in circles over the place, making various evolutions ; after a while passing lower 

 over the woods, and at length alighting; then, as if suddenly alarmed, taking to flight, only to return 

 immediately. These manoeuvres are repeated with various indications of indecision in their move- 



