AVES—PIGEON. 581 
“‘ As soon as these birds discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to 
alight, they fly round in circles, reviewing the country below, and at this 
time exhibit their phalanx in all the beauties of their plumage; now 
displaying a large glistening sheet of bright azure, by exposing their 
hacks to view, and suddenly veering, exhibit a 1nass of rich deep pur- 
ple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and are Jost among the 
foliage for a moment, but they reappear as suddenly above; after which 
they alight, and, as if affrighted, the whole again take to wing, with a roar 
equal to loud thunder, and wander swiftly through the forest to see if danger 
is near. Impelling hunger, however, soon brings them all to the ground, 
and then they are seen industriously throwing up the fallen leaves to seek 
for the last beech-nut or acorn; the rear ranks continually rising, passing 
over, and alighting in front, in such quick succession, that the whole still 
bears the appearance of being on the wing. The quantity of ground 
thus swept up, or, to use a French expression, mozssonnée, is astonishing, and 
so clean is this work, that gleaners never find it worth their while to follow 
where the pigeons have been. On such occasions, when the woods are 
thus filled with them, they are killed in immense numbers, yet without any 
apparent diminution. During the middle of the day, after their repast is 
finished, the whole settle on the trees to enjoy rest, and digest their food ; 
buc as the sun sinks in the horizon, they depart en masse for the roosting 
pluce, not unfrequently hundreds of miles off, as has been ascertained by 
persons keeping account of their arrival and of their departure from their 
curious roosting places, to which I must now conduct the reader. 
“To one of those general nightly rendezvous, not far from the banks of 
Green River, in Kentucky, I paid repeated visits. It was, as is almost al- 
ways the case, pitched in a portion of the forest where the trees were of 
great magnitude of growth, but with little underwood. I rode through it 
lengthwise upwards of forty miles, and crossed it in different parts, ascer- 
taining its average width to be rather more than three miles. My first view of 
it was about a fortnight subsequent to the period when they had chosen this 
spot, and I arrived there nearly two hours before the setting of thesun. Few 
pigeons were then to be seen, but a great number of persons, with horses 
and wagons, guns and ammunition, had already established different camps 
on the borders. Two farmers from the vicinity of Russelsville, distant more 
than a hundred miles, had driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fat- 
tened on pigeon-meat, and here and there the people, employed in picking 
and salting what had already been procured, were seen sitting in the centre 
of large piles of. these birds, all proving to me that the number resorting 
there at night must be immense, and probably consisting of all those then 
feeding in Indiana, some distance beyond Jeffersonville, not less than one 
hundred and fifty miles off. The dung of the birds was several inches deep, 
covering the whole extent of the roosting place like a bed of snow, Many 
49%* 
