PASSENGER PIGEON. 
259 
leled multitudes, they are sometimes very numerous ; and great havoc 
is then made amongst them with the gun, the chip-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 ^f a few dry slender twigs, 
carelessly put together, and with so little concavity, that the young one, 
when half groAvn, 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 Avith the most darins 
o > o 
effrontery. The young, when beginning 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 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 wines : while all is a 
scramble, both above and below, for the same. They have the same 
cooins; notes common to domestic Pigeons ; but much less of their gesti- 
culations. In some flocks you will find nothing but young ones, which 
are easily distinguishable by their motley dress. In others they will be 
