PASSENGER PIGEON. 259 



leled multitudes, they are sometimes very numerous ; and great havoc 

 is then made amongst them with the gun, the clap-net, and various other 

 implements of destruction. As soon as it is ascertained in a town that 

 the Pigeons are flying numerously in the neighborhood, the gunners rise 

 en masse ; the clap-nets are spread out on suitable situations, commonly 

 on an open height, in an old buckwheat field ; four or five live Pigeons, 

 with their eyelids sewed up, are fastened on a movable stick — a small 

 hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the distance of forty or fifty 

 yards : by the pulling of a string, the stick on which the Pigeons rest 

 is alternately elevated and depressed, which produces a fluttering of 

 their wings similar to that of birds just alighting ; this being perceived 

 by the passing flocks, they descend with great rapidity, and finding corn, 

 buckwheat, &c., strewed about, begin to feed, and are instantly, by the 

 pulling of a cord, covered with the net. In this manner ten, twenty, 

 and even thirty dozen, have been caught at one sweep. Meantime the 

 air is darkened with large bodies of them moving in various directions ; 

 the woods also swarm with them in search of acorns ; and the thundering 

 of musketry is perpetual on all sides from morning to night. Wagon- 

 loads of them are poured into market, where they sell from fifty to 

 twenty-five and even twelve cents per dozen; and Pigeons become the 

 order of the day at- dinner, breakfast and supper, until the very name 

 becomes sickening. When they have been kept alive, and fed for some time 

 on corn and buckwheat, their flesh acquires great superiority ; but in 

 their common state they are dry and blackish, and far inferior to the 

 full grown young ones, or squabs. 



The nest of the Wild Pigeon is formed of a few dry slender twigs, 

 carelessly put together, and with so little concavity, that the young one, 

 when half grown, can easily be seen from below. The eggs are pure 

 white. Great numbers of Hawks, and sometimes the Bald Eagle him- 

 self, hover about those breeding places, and seize the old or the young 

 from the nest amidst the rising multitudes, and with the most daring 

 efirontery. The young, when beginning to fly, confine themselves to 

 the under part of the tall woods where there is no brush, and wliere 

 nuts and acorns are abundant, searching among the leaves for mast, and 

 appear like a prodigious torrent rolling along through the woods, every 

 one striving to be in the front. Vast numbers of them are shot while 

 in this situation. A person told me, that he once rode furiously into 

 one of these rolling multitudes, and picked up thirteen Pigeons, which 

 had been trampled to death by his horse's feet. In a few minutes they 

 will beat the whole nuts from a tree with their wings ; while all is a 

 scramble, both above and below, for the same. They have the same 

 cooing notes common to domestic Pigeons ; but much less of their gesti- 

 culations. In some flocks you will flnd nothing but young ones, which 

 are easily distinguishable by their motley dress. In others they will be 



