RARER BRITISH BIRDS. 
31 
abound with the nutritious beech nut, which constitutes the 
chief food of the Wild Pigeon. In seasons when these are 
abundant, corresponding multitudes of Pigeons may be confi- 
dently expected. It sometimes happens, that having consumed 
the whole produce of the beech trees in an extensive district, 
they discover another at the distance of perhaps sixty or eighty 
miles, to which they regularly repair every morning, and return 
as regularly, in the course of the day or in the evening, to their 
place of general rendezvous, or, as it is generally called, the 
roosting-place. These roosting-places are always in the woods, 
and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have 
frequented one of these places for some time, the appearance 
it exhibits is surprising : the ground is covered to the depth 
of several inches with their dung, all the tender grass and under- 
wood destroyed, the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, 
broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above 
another, and the trees themselves, for thousands of acres, killed 
as completely as if girdled with an axe. The marks of this 
desolation remain for many years on the spot, and numerous 
places could be pointed out, where, for several years after, 
scarce a single vegetable made its appearance. When these 
roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants, from considerable 
distances, visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, long poles, 
pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction, and, 
in a few hours, they fill many sacks and load their horses with 
them. By the Indians, a Pigeon-roost, or breeding-place, is 
considered an important source of national profit, and de- 
pendence for that season. 
From the extract above, some idea may be formed of the 
immense size of the flights of the Migratory Pigeons ; no flight, 
however, has ever been known to visit this country. Our 
authority for introducing it into this work, as a member of the 
British Fauna, rests upon a specimen mentioned by Dr. Fleming, 
