PIGEONS. 



to speak, or even to shout, to those persons nearest me. The 

 reports even of the nearest guns were seldom heard, and I 

 knew only of the firing by seeing the shooters reloading. No 

 person dared venture within the line of devastation ; the hogs 

 had been penned up in due time, the picking up of the dead 

 and woimded being left for the next morning's employment. 

 StiU the pigeons were constantly coming, and it was past 

 midnight before I perceived a decrease in the number of those 

 that arrived. The uproar continued, however, the whole 

 night ; and, as I was aasdou^ to know to what distance the 

 sound reached, I sent off a man accustomed to perambulate 

 the forest, who, returning two hours afterwards, informed me 

 he had heard it distinctly when three miles from the spot." 

 Towards daybreak, according to the same authority, the 

 pigeons again move off, and various nocturnal beasts of prey 

 are seen sneaking away from the ground, where they have 

 -found a plentiful and accessible meal ; the human devastators 

 then go in to coUeot their share of the plunder, and when they 

 have selected all that they have occasion for, the hogs are let 

 loose to feed upon the remainder. 



"It is extremely interesting," says the above quoted author- 

 ity, " to see flock after flock performing exactly the same evo- 

 lutions which had been traced in the air, as it were, by a 

 preceding flock. Thus, should a hawk have charged on a 

 group at a certain spot, the angles, curves, and undulations 

 that have been described by the birds in their efforts to escape 

 from the dreaded talons of the plunderer, are undeviatingly 

 followed by the next group that comes up." 



_ The accounts of the prodigious numbers in which these 

 pigeons assemble would be open to doubt were they not made 

 by natnraJists of the highest note. For instance, if less an 

 authority than Wilson narrated the following it would cer- 

 tainly have been voted an "Americanism." "I passed for 

 several miles through the same breeding place, where every 

 tree was spotted with nests, the remaias of those above de- 

 scribed. In many instances, I counted upwards of ninety 

 nests on a single tree ; but the pigeons had abandoned this 

 place for another, sixty or eighty miles off, toward Green 

 Eiver, where tbey were said at that time to be equaUy nume- 

 rous. From the great numbers that were constantly passing 

 over our heads to and from that quarter, I had no doubt of the 

 trath of this statement. The mast had been chiefly consumed 

 m Kentucky; and the pigeons every morning a little before 



