46 The Passenger Pigeon 



have lasted a minute, when the space around us was sud- 

 denly cleared, the birds glancing upward among the 

 branches of the trees, disappearing among the foliage. 

 All this was the effect produced by the return of the 

 female birds, which had been off at a distance, some 

 twenty miles at least, to feed on beechnuts, and which 

 now assumed the places of the males on the nests; the 

 latter taking a flight to get their meal in their turn. 



" I have since had the curiosity to make a sort of an 

 estimate of the number of the birds that must have 

 come in upon the roost, in that, to us, memorable 

 moment. Such a calculation, as a matter of course, must 

 be very vague, though one may get certain principles 

 by estimating the size of a flock by the known rapidity 

 of the flight, and other similar means; and I remem- 

 ber that Frank Malbone and myself supposed that a 

 million of birds must have come in on that return, and 

 as many departed! As the pigeon is a very voracious 

 bird, the question is apt to present itself, where food 

 is obtained for so many mouths ; but, when we remember 

 the vast extent of the American forests, this difficulty 

 is at once met. Admitting that the colony we visited 

 contained many millions of birds, and, counting old and 

 young, I have no doubt it did, there was probably a 

 fruit-bearing tree for each, within an hour's flight from 

 that very spot ! 



" Such is the scale on which Nature labors in the 

 wilderness! I have seen insects fluttering in the air at 



