144 THE PASSENGER PIGEON. 



immense beyond conception." I know that the 

 force of a tornado will break the trunk of a tree 

 two feet in diameter, because its force acts horizon- 

 tally against the upright stem ; but how is it pos- 

 sible that a multitude of pigeons, alighting upon a 

 tree, could cause its upright bole, two feet in 

 diameter, to break off at no great distance from 

 the ground? The branches of the tree, which 

 took their lead diagonally from the bole, might 

 possibly have given way under a heavy pressure, 

 because they were inclined more or less from their 

 perpendicular ; but the upright bole itself would 

 stand uninjured, and defy for ever any weight 

 that could be brought to bear upon it from above. 



I now leave the assemblage of wild beasts, the 

 solid masses of pigeons as large as hogsheads, and 

 the broken trunk of the tree two feet in diameter, 

 to the consideration of those British naturalists 

 who have volunteered to support a foreigner in 

 his exertions to teach Mr. Bull ornithology in the 

 nineteenth century. 



The passages upon which I have just commented 

 form part of " the facts" on which R. B., in the 

 Magazine of Natural History (vol. vi. p. 273.), 

 tells us that the value of Mr. Audubon's Bio- 

 graphy of Birds solely rests. No wonder that, 

 ruit alto a culmine. By the way, I observe, at 

 the end of that Biography, a most laudatory no- 

 tice by Mr. Swainson. He tells us that Audubon 

 contemplated Nature as she really is, not as she 

 is represented in books : he sought her in her 

 sanctuaries. Well, be it so ; I do not dispute his 



