110 



PASSENGER PIGEON 



neighbourhood, 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 moveable 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 alter- 

 nately 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, buckw^heat, &c. strewed about, begin to feed, and are instant- 

 ly, by the pulling of a cord, covered by 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 musquetry is perpetual on all sides 

 from morning to night. Waggon 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 din- 

 ner, 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 himself, hover about those breeding places, and 

 seize the old or the young from the nest amidst the rising multi- 

 tudes, and with the most daring effrontery. The young when be- 

 ginning to fly confine themselves to the under part of the tall woods 

 where there is no brush, and where nuts and acorns are abundant, 

 searching among the leaves for mast, and appear like a prodigious 



