OHAP. I.] PARADOXICAL INCREASE. 5 



through glorious scenes, and mount to commanding 

 eminences, still excited in either case by fresh and 

 new adventure. Progressive must our journey ever 

 continue to be. Nor even in old age need our interest 

 in the novelties of existence flag, if we have but duties 

 and proper pursuits in this world, and a religious hope 

 for the next. 



But Pigeons are useful, not as mere pets for child- 

 hood and diversions for men, but as affording, by their 

 extraordinary and most paradoxical increase, a valuable 

 supply of food both to man and to other carnivorous 

 creatures. It seems strange that a creature which 

 brings two at most at a birth, so to speak, should mul- 

 tiply rapidly into countless flocks ; and that the species 

 which is of all the most innumerable, darkening the 

 sky from one point of the horizon to the opposite 

 visible verge, and stretching its living streams no one 

 knows how many miles beyond it each way small 

 detachments from whose main army supply some of 

 the American cities with poultry by cart-loads, till the 

 inhabitants almost loathe the sight of the dish, 

 good as it is, upon their tables should yet lay no 

 more than two, and frequently only a single egg, and 

 still more frequently rear but a single chick*, while 



* " My friend Dr. Bachman says, in a note sent to me, ' In the 

 more cultivated parts of the United States, the Passenger Pigeon no 

 longer breeds in communities. I have secured many nests scattered 

 throughout the woods, seldom near each other. They were built 

 close to the stems of thin but tall pine trees (Pinus strobus), and 

 were composed of a few sticks ; the eggs invariably two, and white.' 

 There is frequently but one young bird in the nest, probably from 

 the loose manner in which it has been constructed, so that either a 

 young bird or an egg drops out. Indeed, I have found both at the 

 foot of the tree. This is no doubt accidental, and not to be attri- 

 buted to a habit which the bird may be supposed to have of throw- 



