134 Fruits — Flight, ^c. of Pigeons. 



settlements were made north of the river. It is stated by the early 

 settlers about Wheeling, that, in the year 1772, there was a flood in 

 the spring of that year, the waters of which were five feet higher 

 than those of 1832. The evidences they give in proof are such as 

 cannot be doubted, and will go far to rank this flood with the cele- 

 brated one of Deucalion, as rehearsed by the ancient Grecian poets, 

 and which, if it should be repeated in these days, would sweep palace 

 and cottage from their foundations, in every town, and hamlet on the 

 shores of our beautiful river. 



Fruits, <^c. — The spring was very cold and backward, so that half 

 that season was passed before the winter had fairly left us. Peach 

 trees, where the cold had spared them, did not blossom until the 

 middle of April, and apples not until the 25th, which is twenty days 

 later than is common to this locality. It is with us pretty well estab- 

 lished as a maxim, that " the colder the winter, the more backward 

 the ensuing spring," and "the later the spring, the greater the certain- 

 ty of a fine crop of fruit," as was demonstrated in the productions of 

 the year 1832, and of other previous years, when after an intensely 

 cold winter and backward spring, many kinds of fruit were very 

 abundant, and, indeed, all kinds, excepting such as were killed in 

 the bud by the severity of the cold. All the fruit-bearing forest 

 trees brought forth in the greatest profusion ; so that the quantities 

 of acorns and nuts were scarcely ever equalled ; the earth being 

 literally covered with acorns, and the boughs of the trees bending 

 and breaking with their loads of fruit. Hogs were well fattened 

 without the aid of corn, and the " golden age," so much lamented 

 by the poets, as lost, actually returned to all the inhabitants of the 

 forests. 



Flight and bivouac of pigeons. — The Columba migraioria, L., or 

 wild pigeon, seems to have possessed early intelligence of this happy 

 state of things, for our woods, since autumn, have been literally filled 

 with countless multitudes of these interesting travellers. Through the 

 whole winter, immense flocks are seen passing out in the morning to 

 their feeding grounds, amongst the hills, in quest of acorns, and return- 

 ing every evening to their grand camp, which, for this part of Ohio, is 

 established on the head waters of the Little Hockhocking, in a broken 

 and wilderness region, twenty five miles south westerly from Marietta. 

 This camp covers a tract of more than three miles square. The tim- 

 ber trees, over the greater part of this extent, are nearly all destroyed. 

 Trees of eighteen inches in diameter are broken down or turned out 



