308 A PIGEON HUNT ON THE OHIO. 



beech trees. It is one of the most beautiful of forest 

 trees. Unlike most of the others, its bark is smooth, 

 without cracks, and often of a silvery hue. Large beech 

 trees standing by the path, or near a cross-road, are often 

 seen covered with names, initials, and dates. Indeed, the 

 beautiful column-like trunk seems to invite the ever ready 

 knife; and many a souvenir is carved upon it by the 

 loitering wayfarer. It does not, however, invite the axe 

 of the settler. On the contrary, the beech woods often 

 remain untouched, while others fall around them partly 

 because these trees are not usually the indices of the 

 richest soil, but more from the fact that clearing a piece 

 of beech forest is no easy matter. The green logs do not 

 burn so readily as those of the oak, the maple, the elm, 

 or poplar, and hence the labor of rolling them off the 

 ground a serious thing where labor is scarce and dear. 

 For these reasons, the beechen forests of America remain 

 almost intact, and so long as they shower down their mil- 

 lions of bushels of " masts," so long will the passenger 

 pigeons flutter in countless numbers amidst their branches. 

 Large tracts of beech-woods adjoined the plantation 



of Colonel P- ; and of course the pigeons might be 



expected about the falling of the mast. Their migration 

 is semi-annual ; but unlike most other migratory birds, it 

 is far from being regular. Their flight is in fact not a 

 periodical migration, but a sort of nomadic existence 



