PASSENGER PIGEON. 
9 
ously in the 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, 
Avith their eyelids sewed up, are fastened on a moveable stick 
— a small hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the dis- 
tance 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. Mean- 
time 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. 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 be- 
comes 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 black- 
ish, 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 some- 
times the Bald Eagle himself, hover about those breeding places, 
and seize the old or the young from the nest amidst the rising 
multitudes, and with the most daring 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 
VOL. III. — c 
