6 
PIGEON TRIBE. 
a wanton prodigality and prodigious slaughter, strewed on the 
ground as fattening food for the hogs. At the roosts the 
destruction is no less extensive ; guns, clubs, long poles, pots 
of burning sulphur, and every other engine of destruction 
which wanton avarice can bring forward, are all employed 
against the swarming host. Indeed for a time, in many 
places, nothing scarcely is seen, talked of, or eaten, but 
Pigeons. 
In the Atlantic States, where the flocks are less abundant, 
the gun, decoy, and net are put in operation against the 
devoted throng. Twenty or even thirty dozen have been 
caught at a single sweep of the net. Wagon-loads of them 
are poured into market, where they are sometimes sold for no 
more than a cent apiece. 'Pheir combined movements are 
also sometimes sufficiently extensive. The Honorable T. H. 
Perkins remarks that about the year 1 798, while he was pass- 
ing through New Jersey, near Newark, the flocks continued to 
pass for at least two hours without cessation ; and he learnt 
from the neighboring inhabitants that in descending upon a 
'large pond to drink, those in the rear, alighting on the backs of 
the first that arrived (in the usual order of their movements on 
land to feed), pressed them beneath the surface, so that tens of 
thousands were thus drowned. They were likewise killed in 
great n\unbers at the roosts with clubs. 
Down to twenty years ago immense flocks of Pigeons were 
seen yearly in every State of New England, and they nested in 
communities that were reckoned by thousands. Now, in place of 
the myriads that gathered here, only a few can be found, and these 
are scattered during the breeding-season, — each pair selecting an 
isolated site lor the nest. 
Twenty years ago tlie Wild Pigeon was exceedingly abundant in 
the Maritime Provinces of Canada; now it is rare. Mcllwraith 
sends a similar report from Ontario. Wheaton, in Ohio, finds it 
“ irregular and uncommon,” and writes of the “ throngs ” that 
formerly nested there. Ridgeway says nothing of its occurrence 
in Illinois to-day, but repeats the story of the older observers, 
to whom it was familiar. Warren says it appears in Pennsylvania 
in the fall, but no longer in the abundance of former years. To- 
day we must go to the upper regions of the Mississippi valley and 
