80 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.—CLASS II. AVES. 
times occupy a large extent of forest. “ When they have frequented,” says 
Wilson, “one of these places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is sur- 
prising. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their 
dung; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed ; the surface strewed with 
large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one 
above another; and the trees themselves, for thousands of acres, killed as 
completely as if girdled with an axe. The marks of this desolation remain 
for many years on the spot; and numerous places could be pointed out 
where, for several years after, scarce a single vegetable made its appear- 
ance. By the Indians, a pigeon-roost, or breeding-place, is considered an 
important source of national profit and dependence. The breeding-place 
differs from the former in its greater extent. In the western countries above 
mentioned, these are generally in beech woods, and often extend in nearly a 
straight line across the country for a great way. Not far from Shelbyville, 
in the State of Kentucky, about five years ago, there was one of these 
breeding-places, which stretched through the woods nearly in a north and 
south direction, was several miles in breadth, and was said to be upwards 
of forty miles in extent! In this tract almost every tree was furnished with 
nests wherever the branches could accommodate them. The pigeons made 
their first appearance there about the 10th of April, and left it altogether, 
with their young, before the 25th of May. As soon as the youne were 
fully grown, and before they left their nests, numerous parties of the inhab- 
itants, from all parts of the adjacent country, came with wagons, axes, 
beds, cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater part of 
their families, and encamped for several days at this immense nursery. Sev- 
eral of them informed me, that the noise in the woods was so great as to ter- 
rify their horses, and that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak 
without batvling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of 
trees, eggs, and young pigeons, which had been precipitated from above, 
and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles 
were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the young from their nests 
at pleasure, while, from twenty feet upwards to the top of the trees, the 
view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and flut- 
tering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with 
the frequent erash of falling timber; for now the axe-men were at work cut- 
tine down those trees that seemed to be most crowded with nests, and con- 
trived to fell them in such a manner, that in their descent they might bring 
down several others ; by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes 
produced two hundred young, little inferior in size to the old ones, and almost 
one mass of fat. On some single tree, upwards of one hundred nests were 
found, each containing a single young one only —a circumstance in the 
