PASSENGER PIGEON. 201 



parts of the adjacent country, came with waggons, axes, 

 beds, cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the 

 greater part of their families, and encamped for several days 

 at this immense nursery. Several of them informed me that 

 the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, 

 and that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak 

 without bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with 

 broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab pigeons, which 

 had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of 

 hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards, and eagles were 

 sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from 

 their nests at pleasure; while, from twenty feet upwards to 

 the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a 

 perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of 

 pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the 

 frequent crash of falling timber ; for now the axe-men were 

 at work, cutting down those trees that seemed to be most 

 crowded with nests, and. contrived to fell them in such a 

 manner, that, in their descent, they might bring down several 

 others ; by which means the falling of one large tree some- 

 times produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size to 

 the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. On some single 

 trees, upwards of one hundred nests were found, each con- 

 taining one young only ; a circumstance in the history of this 

 bird not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous 

 to walk under these flying and fluttering millions from the 

 frequent fall of large branches, broken down by the weight 

 of the multitudes above, and which, in their descent, often 

 destroyed, numbers of the birds themselves ; while the clothes 

 of those engaged, in traversing the woods were completely 

 covered with the excrements of the pigeons. 



These circumstances were related to me by many of the 

 most respectable part of the community in that quarter, and 

 were confirmed, in part, by what I myself witnessed. I 

 passed for several miles through this same breeding place, 

 where every tree was spotted with nests, the remains of those 



