PASSENGER PIGEON. 
5 
of these returned before ten o’clock, and the great body gen- 
erally appeared on their return a little after noon. 
I had left the public road, to visit the remains of the breed- 
ing place near Shelby ville, and was traversing the woods with 
my gun, in my way to Frankfort, when about one o’clock the 
Pigeons, which I had observed flying the greater part of the 
morning northerly, began to return in such immense numbers 
as I never before had witnessed. Coming to an opening by the 
side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a more uninter- 
rupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They were 
flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond 
gunshot, in several strata deep, and so close together, that could 
shot have reached them, one discharge could not have failed of 
bringing down several individuals. From right to left as far as 
the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast procession extend- 
ed; seeming every where equally crowded. Curious to deter- 
mine how long this appearance would continue, I took out my 
watch to note the time, and sat down to observe them. It was 
then half past one. I sat for more than an hour, but instead of a 
diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed rather to in- 
crease both in numbers and rapidity; and, anxious to reach 
Frankfort before night, I rose and went on. About four o’clock 
in the afternoon I crossed the Kentucky river, at the town of 
Frankfort, at which time the living torrent above my head 
seemed as numerous and as extensive as ever. Long after this 1 
observed them, in large bodies that continued to pass for six or 
eight minutes, and these again were followed by other detached 
bodies, all moving in the same south-east direction, till after six 
in the evening. The great breadth of front which this mighty 
multitude preserved, would seem to intimate a corresponding- 
breadth of their breeding place, which by several gentlemen who 
had lately passed through part of it, was stated to me at several 
miles. It was said to be in Green county, and that the young 
began to fly about the middle of March. On the seventeenth of 
April, forty-nine miles beyond Danville, and not far from Green 
river, I crossed this same breeding place, where the nests for 
